Night Music

by Linda Cajio

  She twisted her head away, breaking the kiss. Her body wiggled against his as she struggled, wreaking havoc with his equilibrium. He gritted his teeth against the sensual onslaught heating his blood.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

  He tightened his hold on her, stopping her arousing wriggling. “Playing for the camera. There are eight pairs of eyes watching us. Don’t you want to look like we’re getting along?”

  “No. Let me go!”

  “Hilary, you’ve got to do better than this if you want my grandmother to get together with your grandfather.”

  “I’ll lock them in a closet,” she snapped. “Damn you, you promised you’d be a gentleman.”

  He chuckled. Her nails were digging into his skin, despite the protection of his jacket and shirt sleeves. They felt almost good. And he couldn’t blame her for being angry with him—again. He was acting like an obnoxious oaf, but he wanted to break through that social mask of hers. “My hands are on your back,” he said, “not where they’d really like to be. This is as gentlemanly as I get. We’ve got to do a little playacting for our audience, to show my grandmother her matchmaking is working.”

  Abruptly Hilary stopped struggling.

  If her body squirming against his drove him to the brink, what it did relaxing against his was unprintable. This matchmaking could be more fun that he’d thought, Dev mused. “Anybody ever tell you you’ve got a body that won’t quit?”

  “Billy Idol. You’ve proven your point to the ‘audience.’ Now, let me go.”

  She was quick. He liked that. And she had jabbed him with her spoon, revealing an unexpected side to her that he’d like to explore further.

  “In a minute,” he said.

  He continued to hold her close as he gazed down at her, hoping to make her blink first. She stared right back, waiting for him to let her go. He felt something within him responding to her, dragging him forward. The control he’d felt throughout their kiss dissipated. He felt … ashamed that he’d kissed her the way he had … ashamed that he hadn’t cared about her feelings. The notion was disturbing, and he released her abruptly, all but pushing her away in an effort to shake the sensation of vulnerability running through him.

  She stumbled backward, and he grabbed her arm. She steadied herself, then stared pointedly at his hand. He let her go. With one hand she smoothed her hair back into place.

  “Don’t worry,” he muttered. “I didn’t muss it. No one would know you were kissed. Believe me.”

  She looked at him strangely, and he wondered why his actions and emotions were so inconsistent. He didn’t like her. She represented everything he hated. And she made it obvious the feeling was mutual.

  “Shall we go in?” she asked.

  “Yeah. What the hell.” He opened the door for her, and she slipped inside gracefully. He strolled in after her, hands in his pockets.

  “Back already?” Lettice asked, smiling smugly. The rest of her cronies were beaming like neon lights. They hadn’t missed the performance. “Didn’t you show her the garden, Devlin? It’s my pride and joy.”

  He shrugged. “We saw it.”

  “It was lovely,” Hilary added.

  Dev snorted, amused by the contrast between her polite compliment and the way she looked. In the light it was easy to see the soft swelling of her mouth. Makeup was not responsible for either the redness of her lips or the flush on her cheeks. They were only the outward signs, though, he reminded himself. Inside, the freeze was still on. He bet she wasn’t capable of thawing.

  A restlessness he didn’t understand welled up inside him, and he couldn’t stand all this nonsense any longer. “Thanks for dinner, Grandmother.”

  He turned on his heel and strode out the French doors, slamming them shut behind him. The glass panes rattled ominously.

  The long ride home to Wildwood didn’t rid him of his strange anxiety, and he headed straight to the docks on the bay. The Madeline Jo was berthed in the last slip, forty feet of gleaming white and brass. In the darkness he climbed aboard and slipped the ropes off the pilings, then pushed the boat away from the dock.

  Once above in the pilot’s cabin, he turned the key in the ignition. The engines rumbled to life, and the Madeline Jo floated like a ghost across the water. It was insane to take a boat out in the dead of night, but he didn’t care. It didn’t matter, either, that he had a fishing charter at six the next morning.

  He had to work off Hilary Rayburn before she got any farther under his skin.

  Out on the water, though, painful memories came back. Memories he hadn’t allowed in years and yet lived with every day. Memories of the spring his senior year in college. He’d thought he was invincible then. He’d thought he could do anything. He’d had money, power, a family name that all the right people recognized instantly. And he’d been obsessed with his best friend’s fiancée.

  He’d wanted Madeline Joanne Belford from the first moment he’d seen her. She was beautiful, and she knew it. And she was Christopher’s. That she didn’t pay quite as much attention to. Dev had tried to deny himself, tried to stay away, but she had been just as irresistibly attracted to him. Whenever they’d stolen a moment alone together, they’d been all over each other. He’d begged her to break it off with Chris, but she’d delayed, not wanting to hurt him. Dev hadn’t wanted to hurt Chris, either, so he’d remained silent, waiting for the “right” moment. His guilt over betraying his friend had been tremendous, and so had the jealousy whenever he’d had to watch Madeline with Chris. She’d seemed to thrive on having the two of them in the same room with her, one touching, caressing, and the other looking on silently.

  That should have been his clue, Dev thought. Instead he’d come to hate his best friend. He’d constantly wished Chris out of the picture, so that his way would be clear to Madeline. He got his wish one night in a car. The three of them, Madeline between them as always, teasing Chris and infuriating Dev as he drove.

  Dev took a deep, shuddering breath and swiped at the wetness on his face. He could never be sure whether he’d missed seeing the Stop sign … or if he had run it deliberately in a moment of unconscious evil. He did know he never saw the truck that broadsided them. He’d suffered multiple bruises and cuts; Madeline had broken a leg and an arm … and Chris had been killed.

  That one moment changed Dev forever. Madeline got over Chris’s death quickly and seemed to want Dev to take his place. But Dev was consumed by guilt. It took him a long time to realize how Madeline had played him off Chris to feed her own ego. He had been too young and too inexperienced to recognize what she was doing. The guilt opened his eyes to his own lifestyle, too, allowing him to see how shallow his life was. So he chucked it all, avoiding his family because he believed they were all shallow as well, traveling around and drifting from job to job, until he settled in Wildwood and bought the Madeline Jo. He’d named the boat such to remind him of his foolishness and folly, especially with women. His life had been peaceful ever since. At least he could nearly live with himself most days.

  Somehow Hilary Rayburn now threatened his banal existence. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something about her bothered him more than he cared to admit.

  Dolphins broke the water several hundred yards out from the boat. Like dark arrows, they leaped and plunged into the black waves. Dev watched them for a moment, then realized the sky was lighter. The fishing charter would be on the dock already, five guys waiting impatiently to catch blues and tunas and maybe a shark.

  With a sigh he turned the boat around and headed in.

  “So, how was the great dinner the other night?” Marsh asked as soon as he walked in the door of Hilary’s town house.

  “Fine,” Hilary lied, smiling brightly at her grandfather. She fluffed up the bouquet of roses in a vase on the hallway table. Her grandfather didn’t even glance at them as he set his driving cap on her hat rack. She’d actually gotten him to her house for lunch, and the flowers were part of her scheme.
She primped the pink buds yet again. “Her grandson was there.”

  Instantly Dev’s image—which she had managed to hold at bay the past few days—flashed into her mind. She still couldn’t believe the absurd things she’d done at the dinner. First she’d stabbed him with her spoon, then, like an outraged virgin, she’d screeched at him, “Let me go, you brute!” or words to that effect. She’d never been so foolish or so angry … and she’d never been kissed like that before. His mouth had been like fire, all sudden heat. She could still feel the hard muscles of his arms under her hands. Every inch of him had been tight against her, fitting perfectly.…

  She had never been so humiliated, either, at the way he’d abruptly left the dinner, leaving her to face those old biddies alone. But at the end of the evening she had sensed a loneliness in Lettice, and she was determined to salvage something out of the disaster for her grandfather’s sake.

  “Her grandson?” Marsh asked. “The banker?”

  Hilary grinned. “No, the black sheep. Devlin. He lives down by the shore, I believe.”

  Marsh snorted. “Ran away years ago, after that accident. The only smart one, I’d say.”

  Her grandfather was nearly as snobbish as Devlin was in his way, Hilary thought, but one thing he’d said certainly perked her interest. “What accident?”

  “A car accident when he was in college. He was joyriding or drag-racing, and a boy was killed.” Marsh shrugged. “I don’t remember the details.”

  Hilary stared at her grandfather, her mind whirling at this sudden news. “Oh. Well. He sent me these flowers. Aren’t they—”

  “He what?” Marsh roared in a voice that should have shaken the rafters.

  Hilary swallowed. This was quite a change from his usual lethargy. “The roses—”

  “Don’t you go getting involved with those Kitteridges!” her grandfather snapped. “And you stay the hell away from the black sheep! The Kitteridges are treacherous and untrustworthy snobs who consider only themselves—”

  “Grandfather,” she interrupted. “Lettice was extremely kind to me, and Devlin was a … gentleman. You make it sound like we’re back in the Middle Ages or something. I’m twenty-eight, with my own business—”

  “Then act as smart as you ought to be!”

  She blinked. She hadn’t seen her grandfather this angry about anything in her entire life. Or this alive. “I am smart, Grand—”

  “Not at this!” He glared at her, his jaw working. “I forbid you to see this grandson.”

  Her jaw dropped at the ultimatum, then she snorted in amusement. “Get real, Grandfather. We are not the House of Capulet.”

  The doorbell rang, and she spun around to answer it. Saved, she thought as she opened the door.

  Devlin stood on her threshold.

  Doomed, she thought. She was about to be caught in her little white lie, which had been designed only to tease her grandfather’s interest. With him now spouting off, she didn’t want to know what Devlin would think.

  “Hello,” he said.

  Her face heated as his deep voice instantly recalled for her the feel of his mouth on hers. She forced away the thought of how she had made a fool of herself with him, and how he had left her hanging. “Hello,” she managed to say politely.

  “Who is it?” her grandfather asked, coming up behind her.

  Devlin smiled and thrust out his hand. “Hello, sir. I’m Devlin Kitteridge. You must be—”

  “That’s it!” Marsh shouted, and shoved past Devlin right out the door.

  “… Hilary’s grandfather,” Devlin finished.

  Hilary watched her grandfather get into his car, slam the door shut, and zoom out of the parking space. She closed her eyes and groaned. He probably thought she’d arranged the lunch so that he could meet Devlin. What a mess.

  “He’s nearly as polite as I am,” Dev commented.

  “What do you want?” she asked in a tired voice, opening her eyes.

  “Did you forget to take a ‘politeness’ pill too?” He eyed her for a moment. “Or did I interrupt something?”

  “Just the modern version of Romeo and Juliet,” she replied. “What do you want?”

  He grinned. “I take it I’m Romeo?”

  “That’s a hoot,” she snapped, angry at her own analogy. She should have said Fatal Attraction. Devlin Kitteridge was turning out to be the kiss of death for her. “Are you going to tell me what you want, or are you going to play twenty questions?”

  “The latter’s more fun.” He shrugged, shifting his weight onto one leg at the same time. The simple gestures did things to his body, things she didn’t want to see. But how could she miss them, when his dark T-shirt clung so to his broad shoulders and chest, and his faded jeans faithfully outlined the shape of his hips and thighs? “I came here,” he went on, “to see if you were still going to go on with the plan. I … ah, I wasn’t fair with you that night at my grandmother’s.”

  It was the best concession she would get from him that he had acted wrongly, Hilary realized. Her grandfather’s words about a car accident came back to her. That explained a little about the rude, cynical man before her. But it didn’t excuse him. “Okay,” she said.

  He raised his eyebrows. “That’s it? Just okay?”

  “What would you like me to say?” she asked, suddenly annoyed with him. “That I’m so thrilled to forgive you for making me look like a fool? You’ve apologized about as well as you’re ever going to, so okay.”

  He scowled. “I just wanted to make it clear that I kissed you for my grandmother’s sake.”

  An odd pain knifed through her. “I understand. Believe me, I understand.”

  “The old ladies … my grandmother’s friends … they ticked me off.” He shrugged again. “I couldn’t stand the cackling any longer, and I had an early charter in the morning. That’s why I left the way I did.”

  He’d driven eighty miles to make it clear his abrupt leaving had had nothing to do with her or with the kiss, Hilary thought. He didn’t have to bludgeon her with it, though. “I see. Thank you for telling me.”

  “So, will you still go along with the game?”

  She was silent. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to scream out for him to touch her again, kiss her again as only he could. Common sense instantly countered that, telling her to stay away from him, as far away as possible. But her grandfather’s reaction was all too clear. “I’ve been forbidden to see you.”

  “You’ve been—” Devlin frowned, then turned to look at the parking space her grandfather had vacated. When he turned back, he was grinning. “Where there’s anger, there’s passion.”

  Hilary couldn’t help smiling too. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “So, we continue the play.”

  She nodded. “We continue.”

  His grin turned lethal as he leaned casually against the doorjamb. “How about if I come in and we discuss this further?”

  It took her three slow, pounding heartbeats to find her breath. “The game is only in play when we are in front of the grandparents. You get your grandmother to arrange something, then call me.”

  She had the great satisfaction of closing the door on his dumbfounded expression. One up, she thought, and went into the kitchen for her yellowfin-tuna-and-wilted-lettuce salad.

  No sense letting a good meal go to waste.

  Marsh sped along the circular drive toward the fieldstone house he’d never wanted to see. But he’d be damned if this family would swallow Hilary alive and spit her out again half-dead, as it had done to him.

  He slammed on the brakes and got out of the car. Jamming his cap down over his eyes, he strode toward the front door.

  “Did you want something, Marsh?”

  He spun around. Lettice stood on the other side of the drive, a basket filled with fresh-cut flowers on one arm. All the anger swept out of him, and all the memories swept in. He had first seen her at the 1929 Assembly Ball. Small and trim she had been, all of nineteen with dark, da
rk hair, delicate features, a peaches-and-cream complexion, a stubborn set to her jaw, and the most provocative blue-green eyes. He’d gone dizzy in the head the instant he’d seen her.

  Her hair was silver now, but she was still the same after sixty-one years. And she still made him dizzy in the head.

  Marsh forced away the grayness. She looked as unsettled as a stone lion. Clearly his presence didn’t affect her the way hers did him. He walked over to her, towering above her as he always had. “You leave my granddaughter alone.”

  Lettice raised her eyebrows. “I’ve done nothing with her.”

  “Your grandson!” Marsh snapped, trying to dispel the sudden notion that he was being a fool. “He’ll not do to Hilary what you did to me.”

  Lettice looked away, then back at him. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Sixty years,” he reminded her. “You weren’t there when I needed you the most.”

  She adjusted the flowers in her basket. “I was young and too scared to go against my parents.”

  “You didn’t love me enough to be poor and unaccepted.” He smiled grimly. “I found someone who did.”

  She lifted her head to meet his gaze. “I was sorry to hear of her passing.”

  She sounded sincere. He gritted his teeth and nodded.

  “What my grandson does,” she went on, “and what your granddaughter does is not my business. I don’t interfere. Neither should you.”

  “I won’t, as long as you keep him away from her. Or I’ll come after you with everything I’ve got.”

  “In a pig’s eye!” she snapped. “You leave those two alone, Marshall Rayburn.”

  “I will if they’ll leave each other alone. You understand me, Lettice?”

  He turned and stalked back to his car, not waiting for an answer. The tires spun rubber, mirroring his fury as he drove away.

  He was still tall and thin, Lettice thought as his car disappeared around the curve in the drive. Almost too thin, she decided. It had been a shock to see him get out of the car. Thank goodness she’d had a moment to compose herself before speaking.

  He hated her.

  She drew in a deep breath against the pain in her chest. A heart attack would be preferable to the ache she was suffering now. She should have learned to live with it. Usually she did. She had loved Marshall Rayburn as she had loved no other, and she’d told him the truth. She had been too afraid to go against her parents and her upbringing when his family lost everything in the Crash. Life had been full of rules and values and expectations then, to which one was supposed to adhere. Rebellion was not fashionable. If she had been older.… She often wondered about that.