MacKenzie's Promise

by Catherine Spencer

  The slab of rock, still warm from the day’s sun, lay shielded from the lane by a screen of low-growing bushes. He’d made love in less private places, including the back seat of a patrol car on one regrettable occasion. He felt her faint trembling; knew she’d be ready for him, that they could do it quickly, and he could make it special enough that she felt desired. Special enough to wipe out the shock and anger of meeting her father again, and leave her glowing with a sense of well-being.

  “Let’s go home, cookie,” he said, putting her from him before lust overcame decency. She didn’t need the complication of sex with her employee. And he didn’t need the responsibility of trying to fill the empty space in her heart left by her father when he took off all those years ago.

  It wasn’t right, after all.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DINNER was a tense affair although, to give her credit, Linda did a spectacular job of the meal, throwing together a feast in record time.

  At Jessie’s insistence, they ate in the formal dining room, with candles and sterling and all the good stuff usually brought out to honor guests, though Mac had little doubt that, had it been just the three of them as originally planned, they’d probably have made do with a more casual setting at the round table in the breakfast nook.

  “Isn’t this pleasant?” Jessie said, glowing with delight as Martin wheeled her to one end of the long mahogany table. “Mac, I want you here, on my right and you, Martin…well, you sit in your old place opposite me, of course.”

  Linda didn’t say a word about that. She didn’t have to. The frosty sheen in her eyes spoke volumes, none of them fit to be aired aloud. Instead, “Will you pour the wine, Mac?” she asked, pointedly snubbing Martin, even though he’d have been the logical choice for the job, since the ornately carved cellaret holding two bottles of sparkling burgundy stood right beside him. “And pass this along, if you don’t mind.”

  “This” was a serving of chilled watercress soup intended for her father. Mac supposed it was to her credit that she didn’t wing it over the polished surface of the table with enough speed to slop it into the poor guy’s lap.

  “Smile,” he murmured, giving her neat little tush a pinch as he passed behind her with the wine bottle.

  She let out a tiny squeak, turned bright pink and plopped down on her chair. Taking his place opposite, he eyed her over his soup and said blandly, “Delicious!”

  Despite herself, she smiled, the tension lessened fractionally, and they made it through the first course without open war being declared. When it was done, he scooped up the empty dishes and followed her as she marched into the kitchen with the soup tureen.

  “See?” he said. “That wasn’t so bad, now was it?”

  “It was revolting, and I’m stomaching the whole ridiculous charade for my mother’s sake only. If I had my way, that man would be out of this house so fast, his head would spin.”

  “Well, don’t take your frustration out on the salad,” he said, backing off to a safe distance as she swirled hazelnut oil and tarragon in a jar, flung the concoction into a bowl of curly endive and proceeded to toss it about with the vigor of a matador tormenting a bull.

  She speared a morsel on the end of a fork and stuffed it in his mouth. “Spare me your advice and taste this instead. Does it need more seasoning?”

  “No,” he said, doing as he was told. “The smell coming from the oven, by the way, is out of this world. You must really know your stuff, if you can turn plain old guinea hens into something this special.”

  “I ought to. I spent enough time and money learning how. And trying to soften me up with sweet talk isn’t going to work, so save your breath.” She cast an eye over the fig and orange-ginger sauce simmering on the stove, and tucked the wooden salad bowl in the crook of her arm. “Round two coming up,” she said, and tromped out of the kitchen with him bringing up the rear.

  It was unfortunate that they approached the dining room just in time to hear Martin say, “You’re as beautiful as ever, Jessie.”

  Linda let out a furious “Aargh! Did you hear that?”, did an immediate about-turn, and came up smack against Mac’s chest.

  “What the devil…!” He caught the salad bowl as it flew out of her hands—just! A second later, and he’d have been wearing its contents. “Yes, I heard. He paid your mom a compliment. Would you be happier if he insulted her?”

  “I’d be happier if she’d just show him the door. Talk about being handed a line!”

  “What if he’s telling the truth for once?”

  She fixed him in a withering stare. “Don’t tell me you’re buying into his weasely ways, as well!”

  “At the risk of being branded equally weasely,” he said, hardly able to keep his face straight, “I think you need to take stock of what’s really going on here, cookie. Your mom went to a lot of trouble with her appearance tonight, and I doubt she did it to impress you or me—or does she always dress for dinner?”

  She pursed her mouth into a fetching pout, reminding him of how silky it had felt when he kissed her. No doubt about it: she grew on a guy, big time!

  “No,” she mumbled, clearly hating to have to concede the point. “Only when she has guests—which is all he is or ever will be. So if he’s laboring under any other impression, he’s going to be very disappointed because I will not stand idly by and see him break my mother’s heart a second time.”

  Mac set the salad bowl on the edge of the hall table and taking her by the shoulders, turned her around so that she could peep through the crack of the open door. “Linda,” he said in a low voice, “take a good look at your mom’s face and tell me honestly what you see.”

  “She’s happy,” she whispered forlornly. “That’s what worries me. She hasn’t glowed like this in years.”

  “Look past the obvious and see what’s behind the smile. Your mother’s a strong, mature woman, Linda. She doesn’t need you acting as her baby-sitter or her bodyguard. She’s survived a lot worse over the years than spending an evening being gracious to the father of her children.”

  “How can you be so blind?” she sputtered. “He’s using our troubles to win her sympathy and worm his way back into her affections!”

  He stroked the nape of her neck soothingly and tried for a more positive spin on the situation. “Or else your troubles have made him put someone else’s needs ahead of his own, for once, and he genuinely wants to help.”

  A grimace of annoyance crossed her face. “I should have known better than to confide in you in the first place,” she said, wriggling away from him and grabbing the salad bowl. “You men always stick together.”

  On that note, she flounced into the dining room and left him to pick a shred of endive off the front of his shirt before he followed. “Well, that went well, Sullivan,” he said wryly. “I can hardly wait to see what you’ve got lined up for an encore!”

  Her mother had taken extraordinary pains with her appearance, Linda had to admit. She’d changed into a cherry-red skirt and matching lace top and hung a small diamond pendant at her throat—the latter one of Martin Carr’s gifts from a happier time.

  Under a pretense of following the conversation swirling around her, Linda picked at her food, submerged in a misery she was at a loss to understand. She’d been sure she was past caring about anything her father might do or say, which made the pain his presence now caused her all the more distressing.

  She didn’t normally snipe at other people, or go out of her way to make them feel unwelcome. Yet despite her best intentions to remain aloof and civil, she’d found herself uttering nasty, barbed little comments aimed at keeping her father on the defensive, and might have peppered the entire meal with more of the same had conscience and her mother’s stricken expression not shamed her into silence.

  What bothered her the most, though, was that her father accepted her attack with a humility that filled her with equal amounts of guilt and anger.

  Why didn’t he retaliate? Lash out at her and thereby justify h
er condemnation? By what right had he acquired the ability to make her feel lower than a worm when he himself had earned that ignoble rank?

  Her relief when dinner finally ended left her almost light-headed. Indeed, when she jumped up from her seat to clear away the remains of the meal, a momentary dizziness caught her by surprise, causing her to stagger slightly and clutch at the table for support.

  “Linda?” Her mother regarded her anxiously. “Are you all right?”

  “Perhaps you should sit down,” her father said. “You look rather pale, bab—my dear.”

  But Mac, his gaze scouring her face, inquired malevolently, “Too much wine with dinner, cookie, or is it the vitriol you ingested with your food that’s giving you the heebie-jeebies?”

  She couldn’t look him in the eye; couldn’t bear the scorn she heard in his voice. Her father might have been willing to overlook her behavior, but Mac clearly wasn’t.

  “Neither,” she muttered, shame riding over her face in heated waves. “I just got up too quickly, that’s all. I’ll be fine in a moment.”

  “You’ve overdone it today, that’s the problem,” her mother decided, “and no wonder, what with seeing June, and all the running around you did afterward, then making dinner on top of it. Take Mac out to the garden and enjoy what’s left of the evening. Your father and I will finish cleaning up in here, then bring coffee out to the patio when we’re done.”

  It was the best offer she’d had in hours, one she’d have accepted in a flash had Mac not outmaneuvered her. “Better yet, I’ll give you a hand in here, Jessie, so that Martin and Linda can spend a bit of time sorting out their differences and hopefully arriving at some sort of truce.”

  She could have smacked him. Throttled him! How dare he interfere? “I really don’t think—!”

  “Then it’s about time you did,” he said sharply, making her ashamed all over again. “Particularly when it comes to other people’s feelings.”

  Incensed, she glared at him. “What I was about to say, before I was so rudely interrupted, is that I’ll be much better company after I take a shower. I didn’t have time before dinner, but after cooking in this heat, I really feel ready for one now.”

  As improvisation went, it was pretty feeble, but she had to hand it to her father for being gallant enough to accept it at face value. He simply nodded and said quietly, “In that case, I’ll lend a hand with the cleanup, too. It’ll be done that much faster then.”

  It was illogical of her to feel excluded as the three of them trooped into the kitchen and left her to her own devices. Unreasonable that she wanted to know what they were talking about. And just plain silly to assume their laughter, which she could hear even after she locked herself in her bathroom, was directed at her.

  “It’s all my father’s fault,” she muttered, adjusting the spray in the shower and shampooing her hair with a vengeance. “And as for Mac Sullivan…well, he can keep his opinions and advice to himself, except as they pertain to finding Angela. I don’t give a rip what he thinks about my attitude toward dear old dad.”

  But the plain fact was, she cared very much, about everything Mac thought and said. And that was the most ludicrous thing of all.

  She’d known him only three days, for heaven’s sake! Nobody should matter that much on such short acquaintance, especially not to a woman who’d prided herself throughout her adult life on keeping her head where men were concerned.

  She had no business finding his kisses so captivating. As for her aching disappointment when he’d backed away from their passionate encounter that afternoon, well the sooner she brought an end to that kind of nonsense, the better! She knew what happened to women who fell under the spell of men like him. She’d seen it firsthand with her mother.

  Curious to find out why the house seemed so uncommonly silent when she returned to her bedroom, she pulled on a silk caftan and stepped out of the French door, which opened directly onto the west side of the garden. Beyond the lawn, her mother was showing off to Martin Carr the roses she cultivated with such loving care every summer. They were talking, their heads bent close as he leaned over her wheelchair, but the low murmur of the ocean at the foot of the garden masked what they were saying.

  The same was not true of the sounds floating out of June’s room as the French door suddenly swung open, just a few yards away from where Linda stood.

  “Sure,” she heard Mac say. “I’m sorry, too, but I’ll make it up to you as soon as I wind up this case…yeah, it’s turning out to be a royal pain in the butt, but I can’t very well back out now…I always am, darlin’, you know that. You take care now, and I’ll see you soon.”

  She heard the click of the phone being turned off, followed by the sound of him whistling under his breath and the rasp of a zipper opening. But over and above that, she heard the wrenching thud of her disappointed heart.

  Until that moment, she’d conveniently forgotten that he had relationships beyond those he’d shared with her. Forgotten that he kept condoms in his nightstand—and why. There were other women in his life, and the realization spurred her to rash reaction.

  Driven by a need to see him, to remind him of her place in his life, she went to his door, not sure what she expected to say or how he might respond to her presence.

  Sensing her shadow at the threshold, he glanced up. “Hey! Feeling better after your shower?”

  “Much,” she replied, swallowing her panic at the sight of his suitcase lying open on the bed.

  “Uh-huh.” He continued to regard her expectantly. “Something I can do for you?”

  “I heard voices in here and—”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I was on the phone.”

  “I see.” To whom? What’s her name? What else do you call her, besides ‘darlin’? She cleared her throat. “It looks as if you’re packing already.”

  He opened the closet and swept his clothing from the hangers. “That’s because I am.”

  “Why so soon? Our flight doesn’t leave until three o’clock tomorrow.”

  “I’m sleeping in the study tonight.”

  The quiver of uneasiness skating down her spine this time bore no relation to that which had prompted her to show up at his door in the first place. “May I ask why?”

  “So that Martin can sleep in this room.”

  “What?”

  “You heard, Linda,” he said. “Your father’s staying here, and you can hardly expect a man his age to make do on a pullout sofa when there’s a perfectly good bed he can use instead.”

  “He has no right to be here at all!”

  He shrugged with such weary disdain that she cringed. “Your mother doesn’t agree. I’d even go so far as to say he might have wound up in her bed instead, if she weren’t afraid it might shock you into an early grave.”

  “Are you telling me she asked him to stay?”

  “You got it, cookie. At least for the entire time we’re in San Francisco, and maybe indefinitely.”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “That’s your problem.”

  He went into the adjoining bathroom and piled his shaving gear, toothbrush and toothpaste into a black leather bag, the entire process accomplished with such brisk economy of movement that she felt compelled to remark, “You seem annoyed.”

  “You noticed? Bully for you.”

  “Are you angry with me?”

  “Right again.” His laugh jarred the tranquillity of the evening. “But don’t worry, I won’t let it keep me awake tonight.”

  His indifference was worse than a slap in the face. Shaken, she said, “If it’s because of the way I feel about Martin Carr, I can’t help it, Mac.”

  “Sure you can. You just choose not to.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like to have your father walk out of your life without warning.”

  He stopped in the process of zipping his suitcase closed and pinned her in a searing glance. “Oh, but I do. And I know what I’d have given to have him walk back in again. Anyth
ing, Linda. And everything.”

  “You weren’t betrayed by your father, the way I was by mine.”

  “You think not? You think I wasn’t angry that he put his job ahead of his family? That I didn’t rage out loud at him for deserting us—for dying, so that some faceless stranger could live?”

  “It’s not the same. He didn’t have any choice in the matter. My father did. He walked out on us.”

  “And lived to regret it.”

  She ground her teeth in disgust, all her earlier feelings of fondness, of desire for him, fading. “What’s the use in discussing it? I can see he’s completely won you over to his side.”

  “You need to get over this whole idea you cling to that people have to take sides, and recognize instead the advantage of remaining neutral until you’re sure you have all the facts. But that’s a pretty adult concept and you’re so busy acting like a spoilt child that I don’t expect you to grasp it.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Mac,” she snapped. “And don’t presume to know more about my father than I do. His sudden concern for his family comes a bit too late in the day for me to place much faith in it.”

  “Gee, I’m sure glad you’re not my ex-wife,” he shot back. “I’d hate to be on the receiving end of such a punitive attitude. Not that you care what I think, I’m sure. Anyone so convinced she’s right and the rest of the world is wrong is hardly likely to waste much time worrying about other people’s opinions.”

  “Why are you making me out to be the villain here?” she cried, crushed by his unfeeling attitude.

  “Why can’t you cut the guy some slack and give him the chance to win back your trust? Your mother can—and she stands to lose a hell of a lot more than you, if she finds she’s made a mistake.”

  “It’s too risky.”

  “Life’s full of risks.” He shook his head and when he spoke again, his tone had softened. “You take a chance every time you cross the street, cookie. Every time you get behind the wheel of a car. Every time you use a bank machine and walk out with a wallet full of cash. You don’t need me to point out there are a lot of desperate people in the world, and one of them could be watching, waiting to snatch your purse and knock you to the ground when you least expect it. Yet you do all those things anyway, without a second thought.”