by Nora Roberts
“There are a couple of things I’d like to talk with you about.”
“Sure.” Stupid to feel nervous, Ford told himself. It had been a long time since he’d had term papers and final exams on the line. “Ah, you want something cold?”
“That would be nice. I just finished doing some priming over at Cilla’s.”
“Is there a problem over there?” Ford asked as he led the way to the kitchen.
“Something about the hot water heater, a protracted debate over drawers versus doors on some sort of cabinetry and Buddy bitching about O rings. Otherwise, it looks to me as if the work over there is going very well.”
“Cilla seems to be able to juggle all the balls. Have a seat. Tea work for you?”
“Perfect.” Gavin waited while Ford poured the cold tea over ice in tall glasses. Then he set the tabloids on the counter.
Ford glanced down, turned the angle of the top paper for a better view. “Ouch. Has Cilla seen these?”
“Yes. I take it you haven’t.”
“No, I’ve been in Centuria most of the day. Working, I mean,” he explained. “How’d she take it?”
“Not well.”
“Jesus, could this be any cheesier?” Ford asked, tapping the photo with Janet’s “ghost.” “Any twelve-year-old can Photoshop better than that. But this insert of Cilla when she was a kid’s pretty cute.”
Saying nothing, Gavin opened the paper, watched as Ford skimmed down and saw his own face. “Man, I need a haircut. I keep meaning to take care of that. Hmm, ‘Cilla’s Outraged Lover Rushes to Her Aid.’ I don’t appear especially outraged in this shot. Concerned would fit better. They ought to . . .”
The full phrase, and the fact that Cilla’s father sat at his counter drinking iced tea, sank in, and had him clearing his throat. “Listen, Mr. McGowan, Cilla and I—That is, it’s not . . . Well, it is, but—”
“Ford, I’m not shocked by the fact that you and Cilla are sleeping together, and I don’t own a shotgun.”
“Okay. Well.” He took a deep gulp of tea. “Okay then.”
“Is it?” Gavin opened another paper. “If you read this one, you’ll see it’s suggested you’ve been seduced by the lonely, trapped spirit of Janet Hardy—or you’ve seduced the granddaughter in an attempt to become Janet’s lover.”
Ford actually snorted. “Sorry, but it just strikes me funny. I don’t know, if they had any real imagination, I’d be the reincarnation of somebody cool. Bogart or Gregory Peck, who’s slaking his lust for the reincarnation of Janet Hardy by banging Cilla every chance he gets. And God, sorry about the banging comment. Really.”
Gavin sat back, took a sip of his tea. “You were one of my best students. Bright, creative. A bit awkward and eccentric, but never dull. I always enjoyed what could be called your unique thought process. I told Cilla this morning I’ve always been fond of you.”
“I’m really glad to hear that, considering.”
“And considering, what are your intentions toward my daughter?”
“Oh boy. I just got this thing in my chest.” Ford thumped on it. “Do you think extreme anxiety can cause a heart attack in somebody my age?”
“I doubt it, but I promise to call nine-one-one if necessary.” Eyes direct, Gavin inclined his head. “After you answer the question.”
“I want her to marry me. She’s not there yet. Still got that thing,” he added, rubbing now with the heel of his hand. “We’ve only been . . .” Probably not the way to go, Ford decided. “We’ve only known each other a few months, but I know how I feel. I love her. Am I supposed to tell you about my prospects and stuff? This is my first time.”
“It’s mine, too. I’d say between you and Cilla, your prospects are more than fine. I’d also say, in my opinion, you suit each other.”
“There, it’s going away.” Ford took his first easy breath. “She needs me. She needs someone who understands and appreciates who she is, and who she’s decided to be. And I need her, because who she is, and who she’s decided to be are—big surprise to me—what I’ve been waiting for all my life.”
“That’s an excellent answer.” Gavin rose. “I’m going to leave those here,” he said, gesturing to the papers. “You handle that with Cilla however you think best. I’m going to go paint. I’ll see myself out.” At the edge of the kitchen, he turned back briefly. “Ford, I couldn’t be more pleased.”
Pretty damn pleased himself, Ford sat down at the bar and read through all the papers, all the stories. And knew just how he’d handle it.
It took considerable time, but the end result more than satisfied. He and Spock crossed the road, and finding the front door locked, Ford used the spare key she’d given him. He gave a shout and, when she didn’t answer, started upstairs. The sound of the shower solved the mystery of where Cilla was. He thought briefly and intensely about joining her, but that would spoil the order of events.
Besides, surprising a woman in the shower in a locked house invited screams—and the woman could produce a serious scream. So he contented himself with sitting on the side of the guest room bed—as it remained the only bed in the house—to wait.
She didn’t scream when she saw him, though from the amount of air she sucked in when she stumbled back, she’d have shattered every piece of glass for five miles if she’d cut loose.
“God, Ford. You scared the hell out of me!”
“Sorry. I figured I’d scare you more if I came in the bathroom while you were in the shower.” He fisted his hand as if over the hilt of a knife, pumped it and did a fair imitation of the Psycho shower scene.
“It might’ve been worse. No Spock?”
“He wanted to go see if there were any invisible cats out back.”
“I need to get dressed. Why don’t you go sit out on the patio. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
Unhappy, he thought. Irritated. And with a faint haze of discouragement. His idea would either help or make it worse. He might as well find out.
“I brought you something.”
“What? Why don’t you take it down, and I’ll . . .” She trailed off when he took the thin package wrapped in tabloid paper from behind his back.
She hitched the towel a little more securely between her breasts. “So, you’ve seen them.”
“Yeah. Oh, and two of your subs, my supposedly lifelong friends Matt and Brian, snuck off the job to come over and rag me about it. Punish them as you will. But meanwhile, open your present.”
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I completely underestimated the interest, the angles. And I walked straight into it by using my mother’s publicist in the first place. Stupid, stupid, stupid .”
“Okay, you can claim the stupid award. Open your present.” He patted the bed beside him.
She sat, stared down at the package he put in her lap.
“I didn’t use pages with any of the stories on them. We might want to make a scrapbook.”
“It’s not funny, Ford.”
“Then you’re really not going to like your present. I’ll just take it back, bury it in the backyard. Where I may come across some worms we can both eat.”
“Really not funny. You have absolutely no idea . . .” Temper had her ripping the paper. Then she could only stare down.
It was a slim volume, comic-book style, she supposed. The cover held a full-color drawing of her and Ford, locked in a passionate embrace. Over their heads, in what she could only call a lurid font, the title read:THE AMOROUS ADVENTURES AND
MANY LIVES OF CILLA AND FORD
“You wrote a comic book?”
“It’s really more a very short, illustrated story. Inspired by recent events. Come on, read it.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say, not initially. The five pages he’d done in black and white, complete with dialogue balloons, narrative captions and illustrations, ranged from the ludicrous, to pornographic to brutally funny.
She kept her face expressionless—she still had some acting chops—as she read
it through.
“This.” She tapped her finger on a panel depicting Ford, full monty, sweeping a naked Cilla into his arms while Spock covered his face with his paws. “I don’t think this is to scale. A certain attribute is exaggerated.”
“It’s my attribute, and I’m the artist.”
“And do you really think I’d ever say, ‘Oh, Ford, Ford, hammer me home’?”
“Everyone’s a critic.”
“But I do like this part in the beginning, where the horny ghosts of Janet and Steve McQueen are floating over our sleeping bodies.”
“It seemed appropriate, as there’s that legend of how they got it on in the pond. Plus, if I’m going to be possessed by the spirit of somebody, he’d be top of the cool scale.”
“All-time champ,” she agreed. “I also like how the pa parazzo falls out of the tree while taking pictures through the bedroom window, and the little X’s in his eyes in the next panel before Spock drags him off to bury him. But my favorite, possibly, is the last panel, where all four of us are in bed smoking cigarettes with expressions of sexual gratification on our faces.”
“I like a happy ending.”
She looked up from the book and into those green eyes. “And this is your way of telling me not to take all this so seriously.”
“It’s my way of giving you another way to take it, if you want.”
She scooted back to prop herself at the head of the bed. “Let’s have a table read. I’ll be Cilla and Janet, you’re Ford and Steve.”
“Okay.” He moved back to sit beside her.
“Then, we’ll act it out.”
He grinned over at her. “Even better.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Every day brought visitors. Some she welcomed, and some she ignored. There was little she could do but ignore those who parked or stood on the shoulder of the road taking pictures of the house, the grounds, of her. She shrugged off the members of the crew who entertained themselves by posing. She couldn’t blame them for getting a kick out of it, for grabbing a portion of that fifteen minutes of fame.
Sooner or later, she told herself, the interest would die down. When she caught sight of paparazzi stalking her while she shopped for hardware or lumber, she didn’t acknowledge them. When she saw pictures of her home, of herself in the tabloids or gossip magazines, she turned her mind to other things. And when her mother’s publicist called with requests for interviews and photo layouts, Cilla firmly hung up.
She went about her business, and prayed that one of the current Hollywood crop of bad girls would do something outrageous enough to shift the attention. As July sweated its way toward August, she concentrated on the house. She had plenty to do.
“Why do you want a sink over here,” Buddy demanded, “when you’re putting a sink over there?”
“It’s a prep sink, Buddy, and I don’t honestly know why I want one. I just do. Sink here.” She laid a fingertip on the revised, and absolutely final, drawing of her kitchen. “Dishwasher here. Refrigerator. And over here, the prep sink in the work island.”
“It’s your business.” He said it in the way, as he often did, that told her she didn’t know squat. “But I’m just saying, if you’re putting this here island in, you’re cutting into your counter space by putting a sink into it.”
“It’ll have a cutting-board top. On when I want to chop something, off when I want to wash something.”
“What?”
“Jesus, Buddy. Um, vegetables.”
He gave her his bulldog frown. “Then what’re you going to wash in the other sink?”
“The blood off my hands after I stab you to death with my screwdriver.”
His lips twitched. “You got some weird-ass ideas.”
“Yeah? Wait for this one. I want a pot-filler faucet.”
“You’re going to have two damn sinks, And you want one of them gadgets that swings out on an arm from the wall over the stove to fill pans with water?”
“Yes, I do. Maybe I want to fill really big pots with water for pasta, or for washing my damn feet. Or for boiling the heads of cranky plumbers who argue with me. Maybe I’ve developed a faucet fetish. But I want it.”
She walked over, tapped her fist on the wall where she’d drawn a circle with an X in it with a carpenter’s pencil. “And I want it right here.”
He cast his eyes to the ceiling, as if asking God what possessed her. “Gonna have to run pipes, so we’re gonna have to cut that plaster to run ’em down, tie ’em in.”
“I know that.”
“It’s your house.”
“Yeah. It is.”
“I heard you bought another one, that old place out on Bing.”
“It looks that way.” The little flutter in the belly signaled excitement and nerves. “We don’t settle until October, but it looks that way.”
“I guess you’ll be wanting your fancy doodads in that one, too.”
“You’ll be pleased to know I plan to go more basic there.” She had to fold her lips when she caught the disappointment on his face.
“You say that now. Well, I can start the rough-in on Thursday.”
“That’d be great.”
She left him to his scowling and calculations.
The kitchen cabinets should be done in a couple weeks, she estimated, and could be stored, if necessary, while the plumbing, the wiring were roughed, inspected, finished, inspected. The plaster repaired, the painting done, the floors laid. If her countertops came in on schedule, she might have a finished kitchen, excepting the refitted appliances, by Labor Day.
Maybe she’d have a party after all. And even thinking about planning a party probably jinxed the entire thing.
“Knock, knock!” Cathy Morrow poked her head in the front door. “Brian said you wouldn’t mind if I came right in.”
“I don’t. How are you?”
“Just fine, except for dying of curiosity. Brian’s been telling us how wonderful everything looks, so Tom and I just had to come by and see for ourselves. Tom’s out there in the back where you’re having the stone wall built up. For shrubs, Brian said.”
“It’ll add height and depth to the yard and cut back on the mowing.”
“I don’t think Brian’s ever done so much work for a private client—noncommercial, I mean. He’s just . . . Oh, Cilla! This is just beautiful.”
With a flush of pride, Cilla watched Cathy walk around the living room. “It’s finished except for refinishing the floor, and we’ll do all of them at the same time. And for furniture, and accessories, art, window treatments and a few minor details such as . . .”
“It’s so open and warm. I love the light. Are those shamrocks on the collar, or whatever you call it?”
“Medallion, and yes. Dobby did an amazing job. And the fixture’s true to the architecture of the house. I don’t know what was there originally. I couldn’t find any pictures showing it, and my father couldn’t remember. But I think the straightforward Arts and Crafts lines and the design, with the diamond shapes of amber and deep blue, work.”
“It’s just lovely. But, oh my God, the fireplace.”
“Focal point.” Walking over, Cilla stroked her hand down the deep blue of the granite. “I wanted it to pop against the walls, the way the sky pops against the mountains. And a strong color like this needed a strong mantel.”
“Wasn’t it . . . Yes, it was brick before.”
“Smoke-stained and pocked, and the hearth didn’t meet code, which you can see by the burn marks from stray embers in the floor.”
“It’s funny, all I remember about this room, or the house, really, was so up-to-the-minute. The long sofa in lipstick pink with white satin pillows. I was so impressed. And the way Janet looked sitting on it in a blue dress. She was so beautiful. Well, everyone was,” Cathy added with a laugh. “The celebrities, the rich and famous and important. I couldn’t believe I was here. We were only invited because Tom’s father was a very important local figure, but I didn’t care why. We were invited her
e three times,
