Calamity Mom

by Diana Palmer

  “I like coffee, too,” she murmured shyly. She smiled at him, pushing back her pale, windblown hair. “But the sea air is almost as good.”

  “What were you laughing at?” he persisted.

  “Them.” She turned back to the crabs, one of which was busily digging himself a hole. He dived into it like a madman. “Don’t they remind you of people running for trains in the subway?” She glanced at him wickedly. “And people who can’t get their coffee early enough to suit them?”

  He smiled unexpectedly, and her heart fell at his feet. She’d never seen anything so appealing as that handsome face with its chiseled mouth tugged up and those gray eyes that took on the sheen of mercury.

  “Are your friends still in bed?”

  She nodded. “Most of us have eight o’clock classes during the semester, so there isn’t much opportunity to sleep late. Even if it’s just for a week, this is a nice change.”

  She started walking again and he fell into step beside her. He was very tall. The top of her head came just to his shoulder.

  “What’s your major?” he asked.

  “Sociology,” she said. She flushed a little. “Sorry I was staring at you last night. I tend to carry people-watching to extremes,” she said to excuse her blatant flirting.

  He glanced at her cynically, and he didn’t smile. “My son finds you fascinating.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m afraid so.”

  “He’s almost thirteen and a late bloomer. He hasn’t paid much attention to girls until now.”

  She laughed. “I’m a bit old to be called a girl.”

  “You’re still in college, aren’t you?” he mused, obviously mistaking her for someone not much older than his son.

  “Well, yes, I suppose I am.” She didn’t add that she’d only started last year, at the age of twenty-three. She’d always looked young for her age, and it was fun to pretend that she was still a teen. She stopped to pick up a seashell and study it. “I love shells. Nan chides me for it, but you should try to walk across tilled soil with her. She’s down on her hands and knees at the first opportunity, wherever she sees disturbed dirt. Once she actually climbed down into a hole where men were digging out a water line! I’m glad they had a sense of humor.”

  “She’s an archaeology student?”

  “Other people are merely archaeology students—Nan is a certifiable archaeology student!”

  He laughed. “Well, that’s dedication, I suppose.”

  She stared out at the ocean. “They say there are probably Paleo-Indian sites out there.” She nodded. “Buried when ocean levels rose with the melting of the glaciers in the late Pleistocene.”

  “I thought your friend was the archaeology student.”

  “When you spend a lot of time with them, it rubs off,” she apologized. “I know more than I want to about fluted points and ancient stone tools.”

  “I can’t say I’ve ever been exposed to that sort of prehistory. I majored in business and minored in economics.”

  She glanced up at him. “You’re in business, then?”

  He nodded. “I’m a banker.”

  “Does your son want to follow in your footsteps?”

  His firm lips tugged down. “He does not. He thinks business is responsible for all the ecological upheaval on the planet. He wants to be an artist.”

  “You must be proud of him.”

  “Proud? I graduated from the Harvard school of business,” he said, glaring at her. “What’s good enough for me is good enough for him. He’s being enrolled in a private school with R.O.T.C. When he graduates, he’ll go to Harvard, as I did, and my father did.”

  She stopped. Here was someone else trying to live his child’s life. “Shouldn’t that be his decision?” she asked curiously.

  He didn’t bat an eyelash. “Aren’t you young to question your elders?” he taunted.

  “Listen, just because you’ve got a few years on me…!”

  “More than fifteen, by the look of you.”

  She studied his face closely. It had some deep lines, and not many of them were around the corners of his eyes. He wasn’t a smiling man. But perhaps he wasn’t quite as young as she’d suspected, either. Then she realized that he was counting from what he thought her age was.

  “I’m thirty-four. But that still makes me an old man compared to you,” he murmured. “You don’t look much older than Ben.”

  Her heart leaped. He was closer to her age than she’d realized, and much closer than he knew. “You seem very mature.”

  “Do I?” His eyes glittered as he studied her. “You’re a beauty,” he said unexpectedly, his silver gaze lingering on her flawless complexion and big pale blue eyes and wavy, long blond hair. “I was attracted to you the first time I saw you. But,” he added with world-weary cynicism, “I was tired of buying sex with expensive gifts.”

  She felt her face go hot. He had entirely the wrong idea. “I’m…” she began, wanting to explain.

  He held up a lean hand. “I’m still tired of it,” he said. He studied her without smiling, and the look he gave her made her knees go weak, despite its faint arrogance. “Do your parents know that you’re making blatant passes at total strangers? Do you really think they’d approve of your behavior?”

  She almost gasped. “What my parents think is none of your business!”

  “It certainly is, when I’m the man you’re trying to seduce.” He glared at her. “So let me set you straight. I don’t take college girls to bed, and I don’t appreciate being stalked by one. Play with children your own age from now on.”

  His statement left her blustering. “My goodness, just because I smiled at you a time or two…!”

  “You did more than smile. You positively leered,” he corrected.

  “Will you stop saying that?” she cried. “For heaven’s sake, I was only looking at you! And even if I was after that kind of…of thing, why would I pick a man with a son? Some father you are! Does he know that his father wanders all over the beach accusing people of propositioning him? And you must be attached—”

  He was oddly watchful, not at all angry. He was studying her face with keen, faintly amused interest. “My, my, and you’re not even redheaded,” he murmured, watching the color come and go on that exquisite complexion. “My son is too smitten with you to consider my place in your thoughts, and I don’t have a wife. She died some years ago. I do have a fiancée—almost,” he added half under his breath.

  “The poor woman!”

  “She’s quite well-to-do, in fact,” he said, deliberately misunderstanding her. “So am I. Another reason to avoid college students, who are notoriously without means.”

  She wanted to tell him what her means were, but she was too angry to get the words out. She flushed furiously at being misjudged and insulted. She decided then and there not to tell him about her background. He’d have to get to know her for herself, not her “means.”

  “Thinking up appropriate replies?” he asked helpfully. “Something along the lines of feeding me to the sharks?”

  “They’d have to draw straws so the loser could eat you!” she blurted out.

  She turned and set off back down the beach, hot all over from her surge of fury.

  She ran along the beach in her haste to get away from him. She’d been playing mind games with herself. She hadn’t realized that he mistook her rapt regard for serious flirting. She’d certainly be more careful in future to keep her fantasies to herself! Never again would she so much as glance at that man!

  It was a pity she didn’t look back. He was standing where she left him with a peculiarly predatory look in his pale eyes, and he was laughing.

  * * *

  SHELLY AND NAN STUCK to the beach and the shops for the rest of the day, and that evening she persuaded Nan to go to a fast-food joint with some of the other students instead of the restaurant. She didn’t dare tell anyone why, or confess the result of her stupid behavior. If Nan suspected, she was kind enough not to say any
thing.

  Two good things had come out of the experience, Shelly thought as she now walked by herself along the beach. It had been two days since she’d run into the man. She’d managed to avoid the worshipful glances of Mr. Sexy’s son, and she’d learned a painful lesson about obvious flirting. He was a banker. Wasn’t he supposed to be dignified and faintly reticent and withdrawn? Her father was an investment counselor, and he was like that. Of course, he had inherited wealth, too, and that made him faintly arrogant. Mr. Sexy almost cornered the market on arrogance, of course, and conceit. She had to add conceit to the list, since he thought she couldn’t wait to jump into bed with him!

  I might have known, she told herself, that no man could be that perfect to look at without having a few buried ugly flaws. Conceit, stupidity, arrogance…

  As she thought, she walked. There was a long pier that ran down from the hotel, and usually at the end of it were fishermen. But this particular day the pier was deserted. A sound was coming from it. A series of sharp cries.

  Curious, Shelly walked onto it and started out toward the bay. The sounds grew louder. As she quickened her pace to reach the end of the pier, she heard splashing.

  She stopped and peered over the edge.

  “Help!” a young voice sputtered, and long, thin arms splashed for dear life. She knew that voice, and that face. It was the teenage son of Mr. Sexy, the one she’d been dodging for two days. Talk about fate!

  She didn’t stop to think. She tugged off her sandals and dived in after him, shoes, cutoffs, sleeveless white blouse and all. She’d taken a Red Cross lifesaving course and she knew what to do.

  “Don’t panic,” she cautioned as she got behind him and caught him under the chin to protect herself. Drowning swimmers very often pulled their rescuers down with them, causing two deaths instead of one. “Stop flailing around and listen to me!” she said, moving her legs to keep afloat. “That’s better. I’m going to tow you to shore. Try to relax. Let your body relax.”

  “I’ll drown!” came the choking reply.

  “No, you won’t. Trust me.”

  There was a pause and a very exaggerated bout of breathing. “Okay.”

  “Good fellow. Here we go.”

  She struck out for shore, carrying the victim she’d appropriated along with her.

  It wasn’t that far to shore, but she was out of practice towing another person. By the time they reached shallow water, she was panting for breath along with the boy.

  They flopped onto the beach and he coughed up water for several seconds.

  “I thought I was a goner.” He choked. “If you hadn’t come along, I’d have drowned!” He looked at her and then grinned. “I’m sure you’ve heard the old axiom about saving a life.”

  She frowned. Her brain wasn’t working. “What axiom?”

  His grin grew even wider. “Why, that when you save a life, you’re responsible for it as long as you live!” He threw his arms wide. “I’m yours!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “THANKS,” SHE SAID. “But you can have your life back.”

  “Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. You’re stuck with me. Where are we going to live?”

  She knew her expression was as perplexed as her thoughts. “Look, you’re a nice boy…”

  “I’m twelve and a half,” he said. “I have all my own teeth, I’m in good health, I can do dishes and make beds. I don’t mind cooking occasionally. You can trust me to feed and water whatever pets you possess,” he concluded. “Oh, and I’m an Eagle Scout.” He raised three fingers.

  She glared at him. “Two fingers, not three fingers! Three fingers mean you’re a Girl Scout!”

  He snapped his fingers. “Darn.” He looked at her. “Does that mean I have to give back the green dress?”

  She burst into laughter. After the shock of seeing him almost drown, and the strain of rescue, her sense of humor came back in full force. She fell back onto the beach and laughed until her stomach hurt.

  “I can’t stand it,” she choked.

  He grinned down at her. “Great. Let’s go and feed me. I do eat a lot, but I can get a part-time job to help out with groceries.”

  “Your father is not going to give you to me,” she told him somberly, and flushed when she remembered what his father had said to her two days ago, and what she’d said back. She’d been lucky, because she’d managed to avoid him ever since.

  “Why not? He doesn’t want me. He’s trying to give me to a school with an R.O.T.C. and after I get out of there, he’s going to sell my soul to Harvard.”

  “Don’t knock college fees,” she told him firmly. “I’ve had to fight every step of the way for mine.”

  “Yeah, Dad and I saw you with the other college students,” he agreed. “Dad was right. You really are pretty,” he added critically, watching her look of surprise. “Do you like chess and can you play computer games? Oh, you have to like dogs, because I’ve got one.”

  She looked around to make sure he was talking to her.

  “Well?” he persisted.

  “I can play chess,” she said. “I like cats, but my dad has two golden retrievers and I get along with them. I don’t know about computer games…”

  “That’s okay. I can teach you.”

  “What am I auditioning for?”

  “My mother, of course,” he said. “Dad’s business partner has this daughter, and she’s done everything but move in with us trying to get Dad to marry her! She looks like two-day-old whitefish, she eats carrot sticks and health food and she takes aerobics. She hates me,” he added curtly. “She’s the one who thinks I belong in a school—a faraway school.”

  “And you don’t want to go.”

  “I hate guns and stuff,” he said heavily. They were both beginning to dry out in the sun. His hair was dark brown, a little lighter than his father’s. He had those same silver-gray eyes.

  “I know what you mean. My parents didn’t want me to go to college.” She leaned toward him. “My dad’s an investment counselor. All he knows are numbers and accounting.”

  “Sounds just like my dad.” He scowled. “Listen, you won’t hold that against him? I mean, he’s real handsome and he has good manners. He’s a little bad-tempered,” he confessed, “and he leaves his clothes laying all over the bedroom so that Jennie—she’s our maid—fusses. But he’s got a kind heart.”

  “That makes up for a lot,” she said, thinking privately that his father hadn’t been particularly kind to her.

  “He likes animals, too.”

  “You’re very nice to offer me your life, and your father, to boot,” she said pleasantly, “but I’ve got at least three more years of college to go, and I can’t think about a family for a long time. I want to be a social worker.”

  “My dad’s real social,” he remarked. “You can work on him.”

  “God forbid,” she said under her breath.

  “He’ll grow on you,” he persisted. “He’s rich.”

  She knew about being rich. She came from old money herself. His father seemed to think that she was after his. That was almost laughable.

  “Money can’t buy a lot of things,” she reminded him.

  “Name three.”

  “Love. Happiness. Peace of mind.”

  He threw up his hands. “I give up!”

  “Try to give up swimming alone,” she advised. “It’s dangerous.”

  “Actually,” he confessed, “I didn’t just jump in on purpose as much as I tripped over a bucket and fell in. But I would have been just as dead.”

  “Indeed you would. Keep your mind on what you are doing,” she admonished.

  He saluted her. “Roger, wilco.”

  “You might like R.O.T.C.,” she said.

  He shrugged. “I like to paint birds.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “See what I mean? My dad hunts ducks. He wants me to. I hate it!”

  This boy had a real problem. She didn’t know what to tell him. His father was obviously rock-hea
ded and intractable.

  “Have you been without your mother for a long time?” she asked gently.

  “All my life. She died just after I was born. Dad and I get along all right, but we aren’t close. He spends so much time at work, and out of the country on business, that I almost never see him. It’s just Jennie and Mrs. Brady and me most of the time. They’re good to me. We had a wonderful Christmas together….”

  “Where was your father?” she exclaimed.

  “He had to fly to Paris. She found out and got on the plane when he wasn’t looking. Since he couldn’t send her home, she went with him,” he muttered.

  “She?”

  “Marie Dumaris,” he said curtly.

  “Maybe he loves her,” she suggested.

  “Ha! She comes from an uptown family and he’s known her since Mom died. She was a cousin or something. She’s always around. I guess he was too busy to notice other women, and she decided to acquire him. From the way she acts lately, she has.”

  Shelly could have debated that, about his father being too busy to notice women. From what little he’d said to her, she gathered that he was no stranger to brief liaisons. He’d even thought she was angling for one. The brunette’s skinny form flashed into her mind and she wondered absently how a man could find pleasure in caressing ribs and bones with skin stretched over them.

  “If he marries her, I’ll run away,” the boy said quietly. “It’s bad enough that I don’t get to say what I want to do with my life, or where I want to go to school. I can’t stand having her for a stepmother as well.” He looked up at Shelly. “We’ll have to work fast, since you’re only here for a week.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I really don’t want your father,” she said.

  “That leaves me,” he said worriedly. “Look, I’m only twelve. I can’t get married for years yet, and I’m too short for you. My dad’s a much better bet.”

  “I don’t want to get married,” she said kindly. “Couldn’t you settle for being friends?”

  “That won’t save me,” he moaned. “What am I going to do? My whole life’s an ongoing calamity!”