by Renee Roszel
Mary was startled by the declaration. “That’s not true, Pauline,” she said, feeling compassion for the busty bomb-shell and unsure why. “I didn’t see him fighting you off.”
Pauline reclined her head to the side so she could meet Mary’s gaze. She chewed on her lower lip for a moment before she answered. “Oh, he did fight me off. He was nice about it, but…” She shrugged. “When he got me bundled outside, he said as gentlemanly as you please, that I was a desirable woman, but he—he cared about somebody else, so he couldn’t…” She shook her head, lifting her gaze to the ceiling. “I knew it was a brush-off. Who ever heard of a playboy turning down…” She paused, then clamped her mouth and her eyes shut.
Mary searched around in her head for something encouraging to say. Before she could come up with anything Pauline opened her eyes. “Shoot, Mary!” she said, her lower lip trembling. “Am I that unsexy that even a man who’s a well-known sex machine has to lie, make up some lame story about being committed to some woman, just to get out of having sex with me?”
Mary was still having trouble absorbing Pauline’s revelation about Bonn’s rejection. She would never have thought of the man even considering a monogamous relationship. She didn’t know what to say to help lift the cook out of her depression. She vividly remembered when Bonn kissed her. Of course, it hadn’t meant a thing to him. No doubt he’d been slumming—the wealthy womanizer grabbing a taste of the hired help.
The idea unsettled her, tormented her—not just the reminder of Bonn’s kiss, a sensual experience like no other she’d ever had—but of the vast difference in their stations. Though he’d blown his fortune, Bonn Wittering was born into privilege and luxury, received an expensive European education, traveled the world, made love to princesses, movie actresses and fashion models. Mary O’Mara, on the other hand, was born and raised in Wittering’s rundown Trailer Town. She’d grown up wearing thrift shop castoffs, had only traveled as far away as Denver.
Whether Bonn truly had a significant other in his life or not, he hadn’t found kissing her a breach of his moral code. Oh, he’d apologized, probably belatedly remembering his fidelity to the lady in question didn’t include kissing the hired help, no matter how meaningless the act might be.
Pauline hunched forward, letting out a groan. She picked up her fork and began smashing bits of the cake. Feeling for the cook, Mary touched her arm. “Pauline, you’re a wonderful woman. You’re passionate, generous and open, and you’re the best cook in this town.” She squeezed her arm reassuringly. “I’m sure Mr. Wittering was being honest with you. He may be a notorious playboy, but he’s still a human being, and human beings can fall in love.”
Pauline glanced her way, her eyes shimmery, her expression full of suffering, so Mary went on, grasping at any straw. “He may not be able to feel the deep, forever kind of love that most of us feel, but it’s reassuring to know he can be—faithful.” That word, referring to Bonn Wittering, was difficult to get out, but for Pauline’s tattered pride, she managed. “Now, go fix that face. I’ll watch the pizza puffs. Don’t let last night spoil your fun. Trust me, the man’s not worth it. Get out there and dance, let him see you’re fine. If you give his ego anything else to feed on he’ll be too huge to walk through doors!”
Pauline blinked, a wan smile curving her lips. “You think so?” she asked, sounding like a little kid.
“I know so.” Mary wasn’t nearly as convinced as she pretended, but allowing Pauline to sit there stewing over a bum like Bonn Wittering would be a crime.
The teakettle began to whistle, so she stood. With a hand on Pauline’s arm, she coaxed her to get up. “Go on. A little powder on that nose and you’ll be as good as new.”
Pauline obeyed, pushing up and swiping at a tear. “You’re right. So what if he was lying.”
“But I bet he wasn’t,” Mary insisted, trying to sound as though she believed it. Maybe the man was trying to be faithful. It wasn’t probable, but it was possible. The teakettle shrieked, forcing her to break eye contact and hurry to remove it from the heat. After she got rid of the high-pitched wail, she turned to face Pauline again. “I bet he was being honorable,” she said. Maybe repeating it would make it more believable in time. “Some poor woman back in Boston has stolen his fickle little heart for a month or two. It could happen.”
She walked to Pauline and grasped her by the upper arms, squeezing in an attempt to bolster her spirits. She had a sudden thought. “You know, Jed Swenson is out there. Do you think he keeps coming into the kitchen for glasses of water because he likes water that much?” Pauline did have admirers in town. Reminding her of that couldn’t hurt.
The cook smoothed her hair back. “Jed is kinda sweet on me.” She sniffed, straightened her shoulders. “Well—I guess I could go dance.”
“You go. I’ll handle the pizza puffs.”
“Thanks, kid,” she said, offering her first real smile. Mary felt better, too, and smiled back. Pauline’s attitude changed. Mary could tell. She looked more determined than hurt, now. With a quick intake of breath and a resolute nod, Pauline grabbed her purse and repaired her makeup. A moment later, her features composed, she marched through the butler’s pantry into the dining room.
The oven timer went off, so Mary took out the pizza puffs, deposited them on a waiting tray and added them to the goodies in the dining room. Her fake party smile was painful, even for the short time it took her to rid herself of the snacks and rush back into the safe haven of the empty kitchen.
She fixed herself a cup of chamomile tea and dropped into her chair at the kitchen table. She listlessly sipped the stuff, all too soon aware she was asking the same sort of soothing miracle from the tea she’d asked of last night’s hot milk, which had failed her completely. She hadn’t slept at all. And the tea, well, as she took the last sip, she felt the same degree of anger and frustration over Joe Lukins’ cruel manipulations of Becca as she’d felt while on the phone with him.
She heard the kitchen door open and glanced up, unsettled to see Bonn standing there. He wasn’t smiling. Interesting how he could fake that party animal act hour upon hour, but the instant he was no longer required to play the part of charming houseguest, he dropped the mask like it burned his face. She was acting the same way, of course. They were both playing the same game, but for very different reasons.
She swallowed, nodded, trying to appear unruffled. “Yes?”
Holding the door just wide enough for her to see the glorious masculine package he was, he lounged against the wooden frame. “Someone named Sam said this was his dance. He asked if I’d locate you.”
“What’s the matter with Sam’s powers of detection?”
Bonn lifted an eyebrow. “Would you like me to ask him?”
Mary sighed, shook her head. It was time to get over Joe Lukins and his heartlessness and get back to the party. After all, as Miz Witty’s employee, she was a hostess of sorts. Hopefully dancing with Sam would help ease her anxiety. “I’ll be right in.”
He pursed his lips, nodded and turned away. The door silently closed behind him. Feeling strangely light-headed, she pressed her palms to the table, leaning heavily on them. How could she allow him to affect her that thoroughly with only a look? She’d seen no emotion in his eyes stronger than indifference, yet here she sat, too weak to stand! She sucked in a quivery breath, knowing she had no choice but to go back to the party.
Fine! Perfect! Once she rejoined the merrymaking, she would be in the same room with Bonn. The only way dancing with Sam would be of any emotional aid to her would be if Miz Witty’s troubling grandson disappeared. She held out little hope for that to happen, since he’d come to Wittering specifically to be with his grandmother on her seventy-fifth birthday.
After a few more deep breaths, Mary was able to get up. She decided to enter the party via the butler’s pantry that led into the dining room. She skirted the table, crowded with guests heaping their plates with delicacies. On her way across the foyer, she noticed Pauline an
d Jed sitting about halfway up the stairs. Their faces close, they smiled and whispered, oblivious to the party going on around them.
Mary had always liked Jed. A fellow Trailer Town kid, he was a shy, hardworking garage mechanic and a sweet guy. The tall, rawboned redhead had an obvious crush on the cook. As Mary passed them, Pauline giggled and patted his knee. Mary had a feeling Jed was going to have a very agreeable time tonight.
She entered the living room and headed toward the library in back. The two spaces were connected by double doors, swung wide. She didn’t immediately see Bonn. That was a relief. Sadly, her relief was short-lived. Upon entering the library, she almost ran into him as he danced by with one of the town’s matrons. The older woman chatted away and Bonn smiled at her, looking attentive and too gorgeous for Mary’s peace of mind. She wondered if he was even listening to the woman, then pinched herself for caring.
She checked on Miz Witty, managed to refill her glass with cherry limeade punch before Sam spied her and pulled her onto the dance floor. Sam was a nice looking, compact man with a short, well-groomed beard and smiling blue eyes. She liked him, and she could tell he liked her. But she didn’t feel the romantic pull of attraction she knew Sam wanted her to feel. And that was a shame. He owned Wittering’s art gallery, and was quite a talented wood-carver himself. He’d been married and divorced, had a couple of kids living in California. He wanted to get married again, and he would have been good husband material for a country girl with no particular aspirations to live anywhere but these beautiful Rocky Mountains.
As he whirled her in his arms, she tried to be fascinated by his conversation. Too bad her mind seemed insistent upon recording where the dratted, unworthy Bonn Wittering was dancing.
The music changed, but Sam didn’t let her go. As the instrumental melody began, a tittering and applause rose around them, and Mary realized Bonn had lifted Miz Witty from her wheelchair and was sweeping her around the dance floor in his arms.
The elderly Mrs. Wittering clung to Bonn’s neck, laughing gaily as he waltzed her in a wide swathe around the room. The other couples, including Sam and Mary, stepped aside, allowing the birthday girl and her grandson the use of the floor. Mary held Sam’s arm in a gesture of possessiveness she didn’t feel. But he was her dance partner, and though they were sidelined, she still acted as though they were partners.
Maybe holding on to Sam was some unconscious mental aberration, wanting Bonn to know she, too, had admirers. Or possibly she just wanted Sam to feel this counted as “a dance” so she wouldn’t have to spend a great deal of the evening with him. That thought made her feel guilty. She liked Sam, she really did. So why did she watch Bonn with such deplorable, ridiculous longing? Why did she tingle at the sight of his masculine grace as he danced? Why did she wish he held her, not her employer, in his strong, capable arms?
His smile was dashing, disarming. Though she knew it was a fraud, it still titillated, still thrilled her and made her knees weak. Maybe that was another reason she clung to Sam’s arm, simply to remain upright.
The dance ended with a burst of applause, and Bonn returned his grandmother to her wheelchair. Miz Witty looked flushed, but otherwise perfectly fine. Even so, Mary decided she’d better check on her. She excused herself from Sam and walked to her employer. Unfortunately, Bonn remained beside his grandmother, who made his departure difficult by holding his hand with both of hers.
“Oh, Mary, dear,” she said, smiling. “I’ve just told Bonny that I insist the two of you dance together.” She beamed at her grandson as Mary disengaged one of Miz Witty’s hands from Bonn’s in order to check her pulse. It was rapid, but what sane woman’s wouldn’t be after being held in those manly arms and against such a magnificent chest?
She bit the inside of her cheek, punishing herself for having such a heated thought about Bonn. He might have fooled the rest of Wittering’s female population with his smarmy appeal, but not Mary O’Mara! “He’s quite a wonderful dancer,” Miz Witty went on. She laughed, sounding like a young girl. “Of course, I’m so light on my feet, I make anyone look good.”
Mary released her boss’s hand and smiled at her joke, though underneath she reeled with misgivings. Dance with Bonn? The idea had never occurred to her—well, not in the past twenty-five seconds. She cast him a furtive glance. He held to his smile as their gazes met, but his eyes were dark, unfathomable. She couldn’t tell if he abhorred the idea of dancing with her or if it merely bored him.
“Why, of course, Miz Witty,” she said. Pointing in the general direction of where she’d left Sam, she improvised, “I’ve promised the next one—or two. Later, for sure.” She glanced at Bonn again but avoided meeting his eyes. “Okay?”
He nodded, his grin cruelly stirring. “I’ll look forward to it.”
The town’s real estate agent, Maxie Unkle, grabbed Bonn’s free hand. “My turn for a spin around the floor.” At five-eleven in her stocking feet, Maxie towered over a lot of men. But not Bonn. She pulled him onto the dance floor and Mary forced her gaze not to follow. Excusing herself, she walked back to Sam, wishing she were happier about it. He grinned at her, holding out his arms. “Do I get this next dance, too?” he asked brightly.
She nodded, making herself smile. “If you’d like,” she said, vowing to ignore Bonn with all her strength.
Sam took her into his arms and danced her around the room. Somewhere in the middle of the love song, Mary weakened and searched out the playboy. Their gazes met, clashing for several tense heartbeats before she was able to break eye contact. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing as she—if they weren’t very careful, they might have to dance together.
She wished her foolish heart didn’t leap at the very thought.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MARY descended the stairs after checking on Miz Witty, who was sleeping soundly, her birthday party long over. Pauline, Ruby the housekeeper, and Jed cleaned up the kitchen while Mary helped Miz Witty get ready for bed. Dead tired, they all decided tomorrow would be soon enough to rearrange the furniture.
Jed and Pauline left around one-thirty. Moments later, Ruby trudged upstairs to her attic room. Mary envied the housekeeper, on her way to bed confident she would sleep soundly. Mary would give anything to be able to sleep! Yawning, she switched off the front porch light, walked outside and dropped into one of the cushioned metal chairs. From the elevated porch, she could see specks of illumination through the trees, street lamps and the occasional house light. Headlights flashed briefly beyond the trees, as cars traversed the town’s byways—vacationers passing through, or rattletraps of local teens, out of school for the summer, cruising between houses of friends.
Even in Wittering humanity hummed along, twenty-four hours a day, just like the big cities. Mary rested her head against the cushioned chairback, wishing she wasn’t humming along twenty-four hours a day. She needed rest. Sleep. She yawned again, exhausted, but her brain was on fire. “You can’t sleep when your brain is smoldering,” she muttered.
She massaged the bridge of her nose, angry with herself for feeling the same giddy desire for Bonn so many of Wittering’s women exhibited at the party. She sighed long and low, making herself think of something else. Anything to put out the flames in her mind.
She stared up at the sky visible beyond the porch’s roof. Stars twinkled there, looking clean and pure. It was hard to think of mean people, like Joe Lukins, or scheming playboys, like Bonn Wittering, under a sky full of sparkling stars.
As a little girl in the trailer park, she’d often escaped outside on summer nights like this. After her mom and dad were asleep, she’d taken the blanket off her bed, pulled herself out the trailer’s window and clambered onto the roof. She would lay there for hours staring at the sky, wishing for a life as clean and bright as those stars. Somewhere outside the muddy, dreary Trailer Town.
Being a Trailer Town kid left its mark on Mary, making her a very determined person. Neither her mom nor dad finished high school, so Mary had studi
ed hard. There’d been no money for college, and though she’d been eligible for scholarships, her dad’s death along with the added burden of his unpaid medical bills, meant Mary was needed at home, to work, to help supplement her mother’s waitress salary.
Even so, on one of those nights she’d lain awake on top of that trailer, she’d made a vow. College or no college, she would make something of her life. She had decided to become a nurse. She wanted to make a difference, and nurses made a difference. They could wear pure, white uniforms, and they got respect, something Trailer Town kids saw little of. Mary knew someday she would be a nurse, and she would get the respect she craved. That was half of her dream for a perfect life. The other half was to get Becca out of Trailer Town, out of Joe Lukins’ mean-spirited custody.
To be a nurse and to have Becca to care for and love, that’s all Mary wanted in the world. She knew if she worked hard, saved her money, she could eventually become a nurse. When Miz Witty had hired her and learned of her dream, she’d made Mary a promise. She’d told her she could always live in the beautiful Wittering home. Since both of them were practically alone in the world, together, they had someone who felt a little like a family.
Miz Witty had even allowed Mary to redecorate the old nursery as a room for Becca, when she visited. It was a tiny room, directly across from the one Bonn occupied. Mary had painted it pink, perfect for a little girl. Such a living situation would be ideal for Becca, to live in a beautiful, clean, loving environment—except Joe Lukins would never agree.
Sadly, American courts didn’t take custody away from a birth parent without very good reasons. Joe might not be an ideal father by any stretch of the imagination, but lots of children had it worse than Becca, and they weren’t removed from their homes. It would take a miracle to get her half sister away from Joe. Mary had a hard enough time getting him to give the child up for a few hours to attend a party. Discouraged, she hunched forward. Resting her elbows on her knees, she held her head in her hands. “What I need is a miracle,” she mumbled.
