Snowflakes on the Sea

by Linda Lael Miller

  Not bothering to dry her face, Mallory shrugged out of her coat and tossed it toward the brass coat tree just to the side of the doors, missing it completely and not caring. She paused to glance at the stack of mail waiting on the hall table. Even through blurred eyes, she could see that most of it was addressed to Nathan.

  Except for one plain postcard, postmarked Eagle Falls. Mallory dashed away her tears and read the neat, flowing handwriting on the back with a sort of calm desperation.

  I’ve been trying to call you. You’re never where you said you’d be. My boyfriend got a job in Alaska, on a fishing boat. Could you get me a ticket to watch your TV show in real life? Renee

  At the end of the scatterbrained missive was a carefully printed telephone number. Mallory went to the closest phone—the one in the living room—and punched out the digits. After four rings, a woman answered.

  “Is Renee there, please?” Mallory asked.

  “Who is this?” the other party countered with tart suspicion.

  “Mallory McKendrick,” was the dignified response. It’s a good thing she can’t see my mascara-streaked face, Mallory thought. “Please—it’s important that Renee and I talk.”

  There was a sort of irritated awe in the woman’s voice as she called out, “Renee! It’s that singer’s wife!”

  Mallory closed her eyes. That singer’s wife. Well, at least she hadn’t called her “Tracy.”

  “Tracy?!” chirped Renee, a moment later.

  “Renee, my name is Mallory.”

  “Whatever. I’ve been trying to get ahold of you.”

  A minor ache began to pound beneath the rounding of Mallory’s skull. “What do you want, Renee—besides a pass to watch us tape the show?”

  “Just that. A ticket.”

  “What makes you think I’d be inclined to do you any favors?” The question was spoken calmly, evenly. Mallory was proud of herself.

  “I never saw a real TV show before!” Renee wailed.

  Instantly, Mallory was out of patience. Her dignity deserted her, and so did her determination to be civil. “Now you listen to me, you vacuous little bimbo, and you listen well. My husband is a good man, a decent man, and you’ve hurt him very badly with your lies. Furthermore, I don’t give a damn that you’ve never seen a taping. Don’t call me, Renee, and don’t write to me—not unless you’re ready to tell the truth!”

  Incredibly, Renee began to cry.

  But Mallory was not inclined toward mercy. She hung up the phone with a crash and was rewarded by the sound of applause from behind her.

  She whirled and blushed hotly to see Nathan standing in the doorway of the living room, watching her. “Thank you,” he said evenly.

  A sob, sudden and raw, tore itself from Mallory’s throat. “Damn you!” she shrieked, half-hysterical. “Why do you have to be handsome and famous and—and—”

  He approached her cautiously, as one might approach a harmless creature flailing in a trap. Without a word, he drew her close, held her, tangled one soothing hand in her hair.

  After a time, her grief abated a little, and the racking sobs that had been rising from the very core of her soul became sniffles. “Damn,” she whispered raggedly. “Oh, damn—damn—”

  Just then, the phone rang again. The sound so startled Mallory that she stiffened in Nathan’s arms and gasped.

  “I’ll get it,” he said gently, pressing the still-shaken Mallory into a chair before grasping the receiver and snapping, “Hello?”

  Mallory watched as one of his eyebrows arched.

  “How in the hell did you get this number?” Nathan demanded. His eyes, dark and unreadable, turned to Mallory as he listened to the caller’s response. “She did? All right, so talk—yeah—? Thank you, Renee.”

  Mallory felt the color drain from her tear-smudged face as she saw the cold, murderous anger in Nathan’s eyes. He hung up the telephone with a crash and started toward the door without so much as a backward glance.

  “Nathan!” Mallory cried out, scrambling out of the chair “Where—what—?”

  He paused but did not turn to face her. “Brad Ranner,” he said, in low, frightening tones. “Brad Ranner paid Renee to name me as the father of her baby.”

  Mallory’s knees felt as though they’d turned to sand. “My God,” she breathed, stunned. “Why?”

  “I’m about to find out,” Nathan replied, biting off the words, moving again. A moment later, he was gone.

  After only a short deliberation, Mallory lunged for the telephone. She talked to a receptionist, then a stagehand before reaching Brad himself. He sounded harried, and his greeting was crisp and impatient.

  “This is Mallory.”

  There was a short silence while Brad absorbed that simple statement. Apparently he’d accepted the call without his usual demand to know who was on the line first. At last, he sighed, and Mallory could almost see him rubbing his eyes with a thumb and forefinger, his customary gesture of annoyance. “Ah—my prima donna.”

  Mallory’s voice was unusually high, but carefully modulated otherwise. “This is important, Brad.”

  “I’m sure it is, princess. Tell me, have you come to your senses or am I in line for another spate of moral outrage?”

  “What you’re in line for, my former friend,” Mallory replied calmly, “is orthopedic surgery. Nathan just found out why Renee Parker named him as the father of her baby.”

  Brad swore, then recovered himself admirably. “Wonderful.”

  “Brad, how could you?”

  He sighed. “It’s a long, complicated story, Mallory—”

  “I’ll bet it is.”

  “There were good reasons for what I did!”

  “All of them taxable and very handy when the bills fall due, no doubt. You thought I’d be more likely to stay on the show if my marriage broke up, didn’t you? Well you can take your stupid soap opera, Brad Ranner, and you can—”

  “Mallory, for God’s sake—”

  She drew a deep breath. “Tut-tut, Brad, no time to quibble. If Nathan gets past studio security, you may find yourself in demand for body-cast scenes.”

  “You’re calling from the island, right?”

  “You wish. I’m calling from the penthouse.”

  Brad swore again and hung up.

  Mallory replaced her own receiver slowly, pondering. Nathan would be furious that she’d warned Brad, but it had been the only thing she could do, in good conscience. When his storming rage had subsided, he would understand.

  What would happen before that was anybody’s guess.

  Resigned, Mallory turned to walk away from the phone, only to be stopped again by its ringing. She stared at it for a few moments, and then answered with a sharp greeting.

  “There you are,” Trish said. “You rat, what are you doing in the city? We were supposed to arrange the sale of your house today.”

  Mallory sighed, relieved. “So arrange it. I trust you.”

  “Mall, are you all right? You sound funny.”

  She carried the phone to the teakwood bar, set it down and began the one-handed preparation of a stiff drink. “I’m fine. Wonderful. You and Kate were right—Brad Ranner did put Renee up to suing Nathan.”

  Trish drew in her breath. “Wow! Does Nathan know that?”

  “Know it? He’s on his way to the studio as we speak.”

  “No doubt planning to tattoo the whole ugly story on Ranner’s face,” Trish supplied.

  “I hope he doesn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to.”

  “Well, Mall, at least you’re off the hook. I mean, now you won’t have to go back and finish out your contract. Nobody would blame you if you didn’t, not after—”

  “Wait a second. A contract is a contract. I mean to honor mine, Trish.”

  “What?”

  Mallory took a sip of her ineptly made drink and grimaced, setting the glass aside. “You heard me.”

  “Nathan will have a fit!”

&nb
sp; “No, he won’t, Trish. This is business and the other thing is private and—”

  “And why don’t you try rowing with both oars in the water for once, Mallory? He’s going to hate that guy for the rest of his life, and I can’t say I blame him! Do you really think he’s going to want you working with the creep?”

  “He might be mad at first, but—”

  “Mallory, he’ll be furious.”

  “Then he’ll just have to get over it. When I promise to do something, I do it.”

  Trish made a disgusted sound and hung up on Mallory without further ceremony.

  Mallory shrugged, hung up the phone and wandered off toward the bathroom. What she needed now was a hot bath and a long nap, and if the telephone rang again, she would simply ignore it.

  It was dark when she awakened, and her stomach let her know how hungry she was. With a sigh, she crawled out of bed, wrapped herself in a short pink satin robe and wandered out into the darkened living room.

  There was a light in the kitchen, and she paused outside the swinging door for a moment, gathering her courage. When she entered that spacious room, she found Nathan sitting at the table, his back to her. The muscles beneath his plaid flannel shirt were rigid.

  “You warned him,” he said, without turning around.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Mallory lingered in the doorway, not daring to approach her husband. “I had to, Nathan.”

  His powerful shoulders moved in a weary sigh, and at last he turned to face her. There was a beleaguered look in his eyes, and he was pale beneath his Australian suntan. “Right—I know you did. But I really wanted to tear him apart.”

  Mallory entered the kitchen, letting the door swing shut behind her. “I’m starved,” she said, making her way to the refrigerator. “How about you? Did you eat?”

  He laughed, but it was a rueful, tired sound, and it tore at Mallory’s heart even as she ferreted cheddar cheese and an apple from the refrigerator. “I’m not sure of very many things right now, pumpkin, but I do know that if I tried to eat anything, the results would be disastrous.”

  Mallory took the cheese to the cutting board, sliced off a haphazard hunk and rewrapped what was left. When she had put that away, she joined Nathan at the table and bit into the apple with a lusty crunch.

  “When do you start rehearsals for the Seattle concert?” she asked, hooking her bare feet in a rung of her chair.

  Nathan rolled his eyes. “Soon. I wanted some time with you before we started, but between Diane and Renee and now Brad, things have gotten pretty complicated.”

  Mallory nibbled thoughtfully at her cheese. “I know,” she mused. “Maybe it would be better if you just concentrated on the concert for a while. After all, I’ve got a few more shows to tape, and—”

  He broke in sharply. “Hold it. What did you just say?”

  “I said you should concentrate on your concert. You know, choose the songs, rehearse—”

  “After that.”

  Cold dread niggled and twisted in the pit of Mallory’s stomach. She knew what he meant, but she widened her eyes in deliberate innocence. “About taping the shows?”

  “Bingo.”

  “I have to, Nathan—I have a contract.”

  “Break it.”

  “No! I agreed to appear in a certain number of shows, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  An ominous calm came over Nathan as he rose slowly to his feet. “I don’t believe this. After what that bastard did to us, you’re actually going to work with him?”

  Mallory bit her lower lip. So Trish had been right—all hell was about to break loose. “I’m not doing it for him, Nathan,” she said quietly. “I’m doing it for myself. I don’t want to remember it as an unfinished job all my life.”

  “How about our marriage, Mallory? How do you want to remember that?”

  Fury stung Mallory like a giant bee, and the venom sent her surging to her feet, her late-night snack forgotten. “Are you threatening me, Nathan McKendrick?”

  His face, so beloved, so familiar, was suddenly the face of an angry stranger. “Damn it, Mallory, haven’t we both been through enough without this? My lawyers can break your contract.”

  “Don’t you dare call them in!”

  “Why are you being so damned stubborn? You’ve been an asset to that show, but it isn’t going to fold without you. Why can’t you just cut your losses and run?”

  “Nathan, this is a point of honor. You’ve never broken a contract in your life—why do you expect me to do it?”

  A muscle in his jawline tightened, and dark rage shifted in his eyes. “This is different.”

  “Is it? Why—because it involves my career, not yours?”

  He turned away from her then in an obvious effort at self-control, and drew a deep, ragged breath. “If it’s so important to you, Mallory, why are you quitting at all?”

  “Because I have no desire to get naked in front of several million people, for one thing!” The words were spoken impulsively, and when Mallory saw the responding charge of unbridled fury move in her husband’s broad shoulders, she regretted ever saying them.

  He whirled to face her. “What?”

  She lowered her eyes. There was no going back now; it was too late to hedge. “The show is going on a cable network,” she said evenly, “and that means they’ll have a lot more freedom. There will be some nude love scenes.”

  “Brad wanted you to do nude love scenes?”

  “Will you relax, Nathan? I said no, and that’s the end of it. I’m just going to fulfill my contract and leave the show.”

  Nathan was standing stock still. “Why, that—”

  “Nathan.”

  His dark eyes were fierce on Mallory’s face. “Call Ranner right now, Mallory,” he ordered. “Tell him you’re not coming back, ever.”

  “No.”

  Nathan’s rage, like lava inside a volcano, was a frightening thing to behold. After raking his wife with one scathing, menacing glare, he turned and stormed toward the door without so much as a backward glance.

  Mallory bolted after him. “Nathan, wait! Where are you going?”

  His retreating form was a moving shadow in the darkness of the enormous living room. “Out!” he shouted back.

  A second later, the front door slammed behind him.

  Mallory had trouble focusing on the morning paper, and finally she yawned and tossed it aside in defeat. She hadn’t slept the night before; she’d been consumed by rage one minute and racked by pain the next.

  Nathan had never come to their bed at all, though she had heard him pass by in the wee hours of the morning on his way to one of the extra bedrooms. She considered all the places he might have been before that and flushed with helpless fury.

  Just then, the kitchen door swung open and he walked in, looking surly and unshaven and rumpled. He was barefoot, though he had, at least, pulled on a pair of old jeans.

  “Good morning,” Mallory said stiffly, watching, with irritated fascination, the play of the muscles in his naked back as he opened the refrigerator door.

  By way of an answer, he scowled at her and then turned back to his perusal of the refrigerator’s rather meager contents. Finally, he extracted a quart of milk and set it down on the nearest counter with a thump.

  Mallory watched with amusement as he plundered the cupboards, one by one, too stubborn to ask where to find the items he wanted. When he’d found cereal and a bowl, the ransacking began all over again.

  “Top drawer beside the dishwasher,” Mallory said.

  He made a face at her, wrenched open the drawer and took out a spoon. Some of the milk slopped over the side of his cereal bowl as he set it down on the table.

  “The rock star at home,” Mallory observed wryly as he fell into a chair and ate a spoonful of cereal. “If only People magazine could see you now.”

  He grumbled something insensible.

  But Mallory was in the mood to plague him. “I hope tha
t milk isn’t sour,” she mused. “The housekeeper only buys it to put in her coffee.”

  Nathan glanced sharply at the milk carton and then went on eating. Just the slightest color rose in his face as he munched; she knew he’d been alarmed and then realized that he’d already tasted the milk and found it palatable. No doubt, he felt a little foolish.

  Before Mallory could say anything else, the telephone rang. She went to the wall phone nearby and chimed a sweet hello into the receiver.

  “Hi,” Pat said in a breezy, yet conspiratorial voice. “I trust Nathan is home?”

  “Yep,” Mallory said, watching him out of the corner of her eye as he opened the milk carton and sniffed it questioningly. “And I must say, he’s the first person I’ve ever known who didn’t trust his own taste buds.”

  “I’ll refrain from asking you to elaborate on that remark, Mall. Don’t call him to the phone—I just wanted to tell you that he spent most of last night on my living room sofa.”

  “Ah,” Mallory said. “I was wondering.”

  “I thought you might have been,” Pat replied. “Just to keep the peace, I wanted you to know the straight scoop. He’s mad at you, and he’s just ornery enough to try and make you think he was in the middle of an orgy.”

  Mallory looked at her husband and, despite the rigors of the night just past and the painful battles of previous days, her eyes danced with mischief. “Why of course, Mr. Hefner,” she gushed. “I’d love to be a centerfold! May? Certainly! I’ll start undressing now!”

  On the other end of the line, Pat laughed uproariously. Nathan shot out of his chair, realized that he’d been had, and sank, scowling, back into it.

  “Give him hell, McKendrick,” Pat said before she rang off.

  Mallory hung up the phone, squared her shoulders and swallowed a giggle. “Where were you last night?” she demanded imperiously, fixing her husband with a steely glare.

  Nathan slid his empty cereal bowl away and tried hard to look guilty. “Wouldn’t you like to know, woman?”

  Mallory took up her empty coffee cup and went to the electric percolator on the counter to refill it. With a dramatic toss of her head, she imparted, “Such is my fate—to share you with uncounted women.”

  He laughed, and the sound was warm and intimate and comfortable to hear. “This has gone far enough. I was tossing and turning on Pat’s couch and you damned well know it—Miss May.”