Home by the Sea

by JoAnn Ross

  “If my daddy hadn’t taught me that it wasn’t gentlemanly to step out on a lady you’re courting, I’d certainly welcome it, Miz Vail.”

  “Flatterer.” She fluttered an imaginary fan. “My third—and favorite—husband was a southern gentleman.” Grace stared as the maven of romance reviews, the woman who could, on occasion, make grown writers quake in their high heels, simpered like a Southern belle. “From Savannah.”

  “Well now, that practically made us neighbors. I’m from Raintree, Georgia.” Grace noticed that Lucas’s drawl had gotten thick enough to pour on pancakes.

  “Ah. Lovely little town. Or so I’ve heard.”

  “I’ve always thought so. Nice, friendly folks, too.”

  “So William always said. We weren’t married long enough for me to actually discover your Southern hospitality for myself—William harbored an unfortunate attraction to Tennessee whiskey and showgirls—but I’ve always thought I might visit someday.”

  “Just let me know when. Though I travel a lot, I’ll make a point of coming home to give you the grand tour.”

  “Be careful, young man.” She tapped a silver-tipped cane on the carpet. “I may just take you up on that offer.” Warning given, she turned back toward Grace. “Mr. Kincaid is a decided improvement over that scoundrel Robert. Who is, by the way, going to be chewing nails when he catches sight of you two.”

  “It’s been quite a few years since college,” Grace reminded her. “Lucas and I are merely friends now.”

  “Of course, dear,” Alice replied in a tone that suggested she didn’t believe a word. “I hate to even bring up your errant spouse while we’re having such a lovely chat, but have you seen him yet?”

  “No.”

  Although Grace would dearly love to give Robert hell for having stolen her suite, there was another, strong part of her that wished she could go the entire conference without running into Robert the Rat. Unfortunately, since the last book they’d “collaborated” on was a finalist for a ROMI, the romance industry’s award for excellence, she was expected to sit at the publisher’s table with her former husband at Saturday night’s awards banquet.

  “I had the misfortune to speak with the scoundrel earlier,” Alice revealed. “He was with his new agent. Your former editor,” she tacked on scathingly. “I must say, they certainly didn’t behave much like honeymooners. There was definitely a negative tension between them.”

  That little revelation about the former editor becoming the Rat’s new wife caught Lucas’s instant attention. Obviously Grace hadn’t been kidding when she’d mentioned that the divorce had been far from cordial.

  “The odious little man actually had the gall to interrupt my tête-à-tête with Patricia Gardner Evans to inform me that he’s going to be writing the next book in the Scarlett O’Hara saga,” Alice continued, obviously enjoying being the one to pass this tidbit on.

  “Personally, I’ve always believed Margaret Mitchell knew exactly when to end that story,” Grace said.

  “Ha!” There was another sharp, satisfied tap of the cane. “That’s precisely what I told Robert. I also did a little checking after he’d slunk away, and the contractual matters are far from settled, of course.

  “The family, as well as the publisher, are insisting on a very detailed synopsis and several sample chapters. It was my impression that they have far less confidence in his ability to pull off a story now that you two aren’t collaborating.”

  Grace wished she could be a fly on the wall when the editors got their first look at those chapters. For whatever you wanted to say about the spouse-stealing Buffy Cunningham Radcliffe, she’d been an excellent editor. But she was no miracle worker. It would undoubtedly be easier to spin gold from straw than to turn Robert’s wooden prose into anything remotely publishable.

  “Well, as much as I’ve adored visiting with you, Alice, I really must dash. I’m due to judge the costume competition this evening and I still have to change.”

  “It’s been lovely seeing you, dear. And I’m sure well run into each other again before the weekend is over. And of course, I’ll be pleased to toast your success at the celebration party the magazine is putting on for the ROMI winners after the awards banquet Saturday night.

  “Oh, and by the way, I’ve given you a five-platinum-hearts review for Destiny’s Darling. It was, without a doubt, the best western historical romance I’ve read in years.”

  “Thank you.” Grace had thought her upcoming book, the first without Robert’s name on the copyright, the novel that had been literally wrenched out of her during the painful divorce process, had been her best work yet. She’d hoped reviewers—and more importantly, the readers—would agree. Of course, in a way, she’d been fortunate; Robert had, after all, provided a great deal of grist for her creative mill.

  “I especially enjoyed the character of the snake oil salesman,” Alice said. “He was such a treacherous devil, peddling those phony cures to the sick and desperate. Why, when he began gunrunning and selling bootleg whiskey to the Indians, I swear my blood actually began to boil. And when he struck his wife… Well, let’s just say that having the Apaches stake him out in the boiling, Arizona-desert sun was brilliant revenge.”

  “I’m delighted you enjoyed it.” Since Robert had been the inspiration for her slimiest villain ever, Grace had certainly enjoyed the vengeance fantasy.

  “Immensely. However, everyone knows I can be horribly bloodthirsty.”

  Knowing how the strong-minded woman’s reviews could, on occasion, draw blood, Grace didn’t comment.

  CHAPTER 3

  “A KILT?” Luke murmured as they walked away.

  “Just be grateful she didn’t order you to roll up your pant legs so she could take a look. Or worse yet, pull down your jeans so she could check out how you’d look in a loin cloth.” A mental image of Lucas clad in a brief piece of buckskin caused Grace’s unruly hormones to spike.

  “Now there’s a thought.” The hotel staff had set up the happy hour buffet. Lucas watched as a clutch of female vampires and another Marie Antoinette look-alike began filling up plates.

  “Actually,” Grace admitted, “although I hate to pump up your male ego any more than it’s undoubtedly already been inflated since you arrived, you’d certainly look better than some of the models I’ve had on my covers.”

  “Why, thank you, darlin’.” He grinned down at her and tugged on another silky strand of hair that had escaped confinement to curl over her milkmaid’s cheek. “That’s exactly what you were supposed to say.” Ignoring the way she backed away from him, he glanced over at the buffet. “Want to grab a bite before the festivities?”

  Grace’s nerves had been too on edge to eat all day. Now, strangely, with Lucas at her side, although she was much too aware of him as a male, she realized she was starving.

  “Just a bite.” She still had her gown to get into for the dinner cruise tomorrow evening, and with all the food that was always served at RNN conferences, if she wasn’t careful, she’d have to hire heavy machinery to hook her into her strapless long-line bra.

  Deciding she’d just have to get used to him touching her, since he fully intended to do a lot more of it, Lucas put his hand on Grace’s waist and deftly led her through the throng to a table in the corner. “Wait here. I’ll get you a plate.”

  “I’m more than capable of feeding myself, Mr. Kincaid.”

  “Well, of course you are, Ms. Fairfield. But one of us has to stay here and hold our table. Since it’s the last vacant one in the room.”

  That made sense, Grace decided.

  “And then there’s always the fact that we Southern boys like nothin’ better than an excuse to pamper a gorgeous woman.” He gave her another of those dashing buccaneer’s smiles, then headed off toward the table, leaving her feeling a lot like Scarlett at the barbecue being waited on by the Tarleton twins.

  Not that Lucas reminded her at all of those two hapless young men. He was definitely more Rhett Butler, she conside
red, watching as he crossed the room, seemingly oblivious to the admiring looks. Despite his south of the Mason-Dixon line drawl, she had no trouble imagining him in the role of that world-famous Yankee blockade runner.

  “Who in the name of cover hunks everywhere is that?” a voice beside Grace suddenly asked.

  Shaking off the fantasy of kissing Lucas while Atlanta went up in flames behind them, Grace looked up and managed a faint smile for her best friend.

  “His name’s Lucas Kincaid. And he’s not a cover model.”

  “Lord, he should be. I know I write contemporaries, but I’ve been toying with the idea of a time-travel featuring a pirate hero.” Jamie Winston’s eyes turned thoughtful. “I don’t suppose—”

  “No.” Grace shook her head. “I don’t think he’s in the market for a career change.”

  “So, what does he do?” Jamie slipped into a chair beside Grace without taking her eyes from the object of her speculation. “And wherever did you find him?”

  “In the classifieds.”

  “Lucky girl. All I’ve ever found in those ads is a used Plymouth and a kitten that needed to be wormed after we got her home. I guess I should have been looking under Hunks.”

  “Actually, I found him in the personals.”

  “While I’m pleased as punch that you’re getting out again these days, I cannot believe a man who looks like that has to advertise for companionship.”

  “It’s not that way. He was listed as a hero. And I needed one.”

  “Don’t we all,” Jamie drawled.

  Grace laughed, relaxing for the first time in ages. “Well, there is that,” she agreed. “But this was serious. Lucas is a bodyguard.”

  “Oh, no.” Jamie Winston’s smile faded from her face and from her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’ve gotten another letter?”

  “It was waiting for me here at the hotel when I arrived this morning.”

  Grace would never have considered withholding the truth from her best friend. She and Jamie had first met in Boston six years ago, at one of the few conferences Grace had attended. She had been a fledgling writer and Jamie already had half a dozen books under her jeweled belt.

  A middle-of-the-night fire alarm at the hotel had forced them to climb down twenty-eight flights of stairs in their nightgowns. Grace hadn’t even thought to grab her robe. Jamie, on the other hand, possessing a natural-born flair for the dramatic, had been swathed in ranch mink, which she’d willingly shared while they’d huddled together on the sidewalk on a cold New England night until the firemen had declared a false alarm.

  That was how Grace discovered that Robert hadn’t been in their room. Later, he’d assured her he’d been meeting with Buffy to discuss a possible anthology. Since she hadn’t wanted to face the truth in those days, Grace hadn’t pressed for details.

  “I still don’t think it’s anything serious,” she assured her friend. “But I was skimming through USA Today on the plane and saw this ad that asked, Need a Hero? Call 1-800-555-Hero. So I did.”

  “And you got him.” Jamie’s gaze wandered back across the room. “I never realized fairy godmothers had 1-800 numbers. Talk about modernizing.”

  Despite her reason for hiring Lucas in the first place, Grace laughed again. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said with a warm rush of feeling.

  “Where else would I be when my best pal wins a ROMI?” Jamie scowled. “It’s only too bad that the Rat has to get one, too.”

  “The winners haven’t been announced yet,” Grace reminded her. “Besides, if it weren’t for the Rat, I might never have gotten published in the first place.”

  Grace tried on occasion to remind herself that there’d been a time when Robert had been important to her. When she’d lived for his opinion, his approval. She certainly hadn’t married him for the sex. Which had never been anything to shout about and was virtually nonexistent in the end.

  “Hell, of course you would have. You’re wonderfully talented, sweetie.”

  “Thank you. That means a lot from someone whose work I’ve always admired. But without his encouragement, I might have given up.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, you could no sooner quit writing than I could quit having babies.” Jamie, who was pregnant with her fifth, patted her bulging stomach and smiled with feminine satisfaction. “Please tell me the hunk is single.”

  “I have no idea. It didn’t come up.”

  “It’s hard to believe women have let that one get away,” Jamie mused. “Oh, Lord. This is San Francisco. You don’t suppose he’s gay, do you?”

  “I have no idea. And I don’t care.” Liar, Grace thought as her own gaze wandered over to where Lucas was now surrounded by a bevy of admiring romance writers.

  “Well, even if he is, there’s no reason for anyone to ever know.” Jamie’s grin reminded Grace of a pregnant cat who’d just spotted a particularly succulent saucer of cream. “This situation is rife with possibilities for a delicious revenge.”

  “Revenge?”

  “If Robert even remotely suspects there’s anything personal going on between you two, he’ll go nuts.”

  “If it doesn’t have anything to do with my money, I doubt he’d even care.”

  “You’re overlooking the wonderfully fragile male ego. Robert might have dumped you, but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t by nature competitive when it comes to women.

  “It goes back to caveman days. Just because he was foolish enough to think he didn’t want you doesn’t mean he’ll be able to stand the idea of some drop-dead-hunk Neanderthal whacking you over the head with a club and dragging you home to his cave.”

  “Lucas isn’t exactly a Neanderthal.”

  “Don’t be so picky. As a writer you should recognize a metaphor when you hear one. But believe me, Grace, when the Rat sees the two of you together, he’ll undoubtedly go drown himself in the bay.”

  “One can only hope. Especially since Lucas changed my cover story from us being old friends to being old lovers.”

  “Oh, I just love this! It’s right from the plot of my last book, where the bodyguard and the princess fall madly in love and live happily ever after.”

  “That’s fiction,” Grace noted dryly. “Just like Lucas’s story.”

  “True. But don’t forget that old saying about life imitating art,” Jamie countered.

  When she felt the hated telltale color rising in her cheeks again, Grace decided the time had come to change the subject. “By the way, did you hear that Robert’s telling people he’s going to be writing the new Scarlett book?”

  “Not only did I hear, but Bubbles, his blushing bride, actually called me last week and asked me to write it for him.”

  “Her name’s Buffy.” As Jamie well knew.

  “Buffy, Bubbles, Bimbo, it’s all the same to me.” Jamie dismissed the correction. “Anyway, she mentioned a very generous royalty split, but since the Rat is about as capable of crafting a story as an orangutan with a fistful of crayons, it was obvious I’d be left to do all the work while he went on Good Morning America and took all the glory. Something he’s very good at. As you know all too well.”

  “Are you considering it?” Grace couldn’t see where it would be a good career move. Then again, she didn’t have any right to tell Jamie what—and with whom—she could write. Especially since her husband, Peter Winston, had recently given up a lucrative Chicago law practice to set up a storefront office in the inner city. And there was always the matter of another baby on the way.

  “Are you kidding? Even if you weren’t my best friend, and even if the Rat could write, which we both know he can’t, there’s no way I’d be willing to put up with his roving hands.”

  “Roving…” Grace stared at her long-time friend. “Surely you’re not saying…”

  “Aw, hell.” Jamie shook her head. “I swore to myself that I was never going to say anything. But yeah, he hit on me a few times.”

  “When?”

  “In Boston. And again in Chicago. And
in Hawaii. And New York. Oh, and there were those brief little skirmishes we had in elevators in Dallas and Seattle.”

  “That’s more than a few.” It was every national RNN conference Robert had attended. Since Grace had felt uncomfortable in the spotlight, after the first year, she’d stayed home, content to let her husband, who enjoyed the publicity end of the business, take center stage. Which had left her free to write. And him to fool around. “Is that all?”

  “Absolutely.”

  It was a lie and both women knew it.

  Silence settled over them. “I should have told you,” Jamie said glumly.

  “Yeah. You should have.”

  “It was just that I valued our friendship so much I was afraid to risk his bad behavior coming between us.”

  She placed her hand on Grace’s icy one.

  “Besides, I didn’t have any proof that he was cheating. And you know what an outrageous flirt he is. So I just kept trying to convince myself that he wasn’t really serious about all those passes.”

  “Well, that certainly makes two of us.” Grace sighed and realized that she’d willingly overlooked the signs herself during the early days of her marriage. By the end, she’d suspected, but hadn’t really cared.

  “You know—” Jamie returned her gaze to Lucas, who seemed to be having a fascinating discussion about tempura shrimp with a flock of avid female admirers “—perhaps you could have the hunk beat him up.”

  Even as Grace told herself that she’d moved on with her life, she couldn’t deny that the idea of Lucas pounding the stuffing out of Robert the Rat proved more than a little appealing.

  When Lucas returned to the table with two gilt-rimmed plates, Grace made the introductions and was relieved when Jamie, who could be frighteningly outspoken, didn’t utter a single word about the possibility of him modeling for her upcoming book cover. In fact, she seemed almost eager to leave them alone.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lucas.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Lucas said, shaking the slender, outstretched hand. “As Gracie’s best friend, you’re probably just the lady to fill me in on any of the men in her life I might have to run off.”