Enemy in Camp (The Americana Series Book 22)

by Janet Dailey

  Victoria turned away. "She needs to learn about a backhand all right, the kind applied to her bottom," she said in disgust.

  "She's young," her mother reasoned.

  "What's his excuse?" Victoria challenged, slicing a glance at the tall, dark man on the court. "He's experienced enough to know what she's doing." In Victoria's opinion Penny was making a fool of herself, and she didn't like the idea of Dirk Ramsey laughing at any of her family.

  "He's being kind," her mother insisted.

  "Kind? That isn't an adjective I would associate with him," she retorted. "What exactly do you know about him, dad?"

  "Not much," he admitted, pursing his lips together in a considering expression. "I know he came up the hard way."

  "The hard way, huh?" Victoria was mockingly skeptical. "With his looks I can't imagine that anything was ever hard for him."

  "With his looks," her mother inserted, "I imagine it was difficult for people to take him seriously as a hard-issue journalist."

  "I'm sure you are right, Lena," her father agreed.

  Victoria didn't, but rather than argue she excused herself. "I'm going to walk for a bit before my legs cramp up."

  AT DINNER that evening, Penny appeared at the table with her long, honey-blond hair swept on top of her head in a smooth coil. Victoria recognized the gold hooped earrings her sister was wearing as a pair of her own, obviously borrowed from her jewelry case. Her young sister was attempting to look worldly even though she lacked the experience to carry it off.

  Aware that it was all done for Dirk's benefit, both Victoria and her parents were careful not to comment on Penny's sudden burst of sophistication. Only Victoria was close enough to hear Dirk voice his reaction to the new Penny.

  "You are very attractive tonight. With your hair up like that you look very young and vulnerable." Which was true, even though it was the exact opposite of the effect that Penny was trying to achieve. And Penny wouldn't have believed it from anyone else. Dirk took the sting out of his comment by adding, "And I feel very old in comparison." It was the twinge of regret in his look and voice that made the difference, and soothed Penny's hurt feelings. In truth, he was more than twice Penny's age.

  Victoria's reaction to his comment was mixed. On the one hand, she was glad he had been truthful and had not let Penny think she looked older. Yet she resented him, too, for gently crushing Penny's sensitive feelings. Victoria didn't like regarding Dirk with this ambivalence. This constant fluctuation was disturbing.

  BREAKFAST WAS not served at a set time in the Beaumont household, especially when they were vacationing on the island. Whenever anyone came downstairs in the morning there was cereal, fruit, toast and juice in the kitchen. Victoria ate her toast and coffee alone in the breakfast nook partitioned from the kitchen by a decorative iron screen. Everyone else, with the exception of Penny who was still in bed, had already eaten.

  When she had finished, she stopped by the library where her father was reading and her mother was catching up on some family correspondence. Her father glanced at her over the rims of his reading glasses.

  "Good morning, Tory," he greeted her.

  "Hi. I'm going into town this morning for some shampoo and things. Is there anything you wanted me to pick up for you, mom?" she asked.

  "Not that I can think of, no," her mother replied after a second's pause.

  "Have you phoned for a taxi or were you planning to walk?" The inquiry came from her father. The smile on his face said he had already guessed her answer.

  "Call me one, will you?" Victoria grinned. "I'm going upstairs for my purse. I'll probably have lunch in town, so if I'm not back by noon don't wait for me."

  "All right," her mother agreed.

  Ascending the stairs Victoria took her time. Unless there was a taxi in the immediate vicinity of their summer home, it would be several minutes before one arrived since it was literally dependent on horsepower. In her room, she paused in front of the vanity mirror to adjust the mandarinlike collar of her sleeveless lavender dress. At the last minute, she added a narrow white belt to make a waistline in the straight style of the dress with its split side pleats.

  Her bedroom faced the front of the house directly above the library. The bay window that jutted out from the room below was repeated in her bedroom. The lower half of one window was raised to let in the heavy scent of lilacs blooming in the front of the house. A pair of birds chattered noisily outside the window, nearly drowning out the sound of trotting hooves approaching the house.

  Slipping the strap of her purse over her shoulder Victoria hurried out of the bedroom into the second-floor foyer. At the same moment Dirk came out of his bedroom.

  Good manners dictated that she couldn't ignore him, so she tossed him an indifferent, "Good morning." Victoria would have left it at that, but she wasn't given the chance.

  "Is that your taxi pulling up outside the house?" Dirk asked.

  "Yes." She paused with a hand on the railing of the stairs. "I'm on my way into town. Why?"

  Dirk stopped near her, dressed in oyster-gray slacks and a lighter gray shirt. "Would you mind if I came along with you?"

  Irritated because she couldn't think of an adequate reason to refuse him, Victoria retorted, "I thought you would probably be spending this morning sharpening your pen so you could dip it in your poison ink."

  He swept her cool expression with a lazy look. "I haven't obtained enough material yet. May I ride with you?"

  Victoria took a deep breath and let it out in a long, exasperated sound. "Of course."

  "Don't sound too overjoyed or I might get the wrong idea," he mocked.

  "Would that it were true," she murmured and started down the stairs. It didn't require a sixth sense to know that her leisurely, peaceful morning in town had just been shot down by the enemy.

  Her father was in the entryway when Victoria rounded the curve of the staircase. "Your taxi is waiting." When he caught sight of the man behind her, he asked, "Are you going with Tory?"

  "Yes," Dirk answered without elaboration.

  Her father didn't seem unduly surprised by it. "It's a beautiful morning. We'll see you when you come back." He continued on to the library.

  Crossing the foyer Victoria walked to the front door. Dirk reached in front of her to open it. She inclined her head in a haughty acknowledgement of his courtesy and avoided that mocking light she knew would be in his gaze. There wasn't really any reason for her to be so stiff and formal, but it seemed her only protection.

  The main entrance of the house was recessed under the timbered roof that connected the breezeway to the garage. The horse-drawn taxi waited for them by the stone walk. Dirk helped her into the rubber-wheeled buggy, then climbed in to sit beside her. Victoria didn't remember the seats being so narrow. After asking the driver to take them to the harbor, she adjusted the side pleat of her dress so it wouldn't reveal so much thigh.

  With a flick of his whip and the urging click of his tongue, the driver had the horse leaning into its harness. The buggy started forward with a slight lurch before the horse settled into a steady trot.

  The silence was more than Victoria could tolerate. It made her too conscious of the muscled arm and shoulder brushing against hers. She moved her purse onto her lap so it wouldn't be poking her in the side and let her fingers fidget with the metal clasp.

  "What are your first impressions of Mackinac Island?" Her gray eyes slid him a sideways look of feigned interest.

  "It has a certain nostalgic appeal, an escape into the past." His encompassing glance included the bobbing head of the horse pulling the taxi-buggy, and the green trees rising out of the rocky ground.

  "It's certain that the pollution problems here are limited to horse droppings and litter," Victoria admitted with a wry smile.

  "How long have you been coming here?" Dirk questioned.

  "We've spent at least a month here every summer since I was five," she replied. The question brought back a lot of childhood memories of idyllic d
ays on the island. "I loved the horses," Victoria recalled. "When I was seven one of my friends had her own pony and cart. I begged my father to let me have one, too, but he convinced me it wasn't fair to the pony since it would be lonely all the months I was gone."

  "It must be tough to be the daughter of rich parents," he derided, a corner of his mouth quirking.

  Her bristling defense was automatic. "It has its drawbacks."

  "Such as?" Dirk challenged in a taunting drawl.

  "Such as enduring the company of rude reporters."

  Dirk chuckled. "I think the lady is trying to put me down."

  "Wherever did you get that idea?" she murmured with cool innocence.

  "Where did you go to college? Bryn Mawr? Vassar?"

  "What makes you think I didn't go to Ann Arbor?" Victoria countered.

  "Did you?" He arched a skeptical brow.

  "As a matter of fact I didn't," she fairly snapped out the admission. "But I have no doubt that you already know which university I attended. More than likely you researched the background of everyone in the family, including me. I'm quite sure you are fully aware of all my vital statistics."

  "No, not all," Dirk denied that, a wicked light glinting in his dark eyes. "But I think I could guess quite accurately what they are, considering what little of your body I didn't see in that swimsuit." His gaze made a slow and deliberately insolent sweep of her figure. "Do you want to know what I think your measurements are?"

  "Not particularly." Her lips thinned into an angry line as her fingers tightened protectively on the small shield of her purse.

  Dirk leaned forward and asked the driver to stop for a minute. His request caught Victoria off guard, confusing her as to his motive. He stepped out and walked to a lilac bush growing close to the road. Snapping off a cluster, he returned to the buggy and dropped the richly scented flowers in her lap as he climbed back in.

  "What's this for?" Victoria frowned, wondering if it was supposed to be some kind of peace offering. She had no desire to make peace with him.

  "You seem to be having trouble finding something to do with your hands," Dirk replied as the buggy lurched forward again. "I thought you could play with the flower instead of your purse. At the rate you're going the clasp will be broken before we reach the harbor."

  Even as he made his explanation Victoria discovered her nervous fingers were already twirling the stem of the flower, scattering the scent in all directions to envelop them. She forced her hand to hold it still.

  "Maybe if I put my arm back here, you'll feel more relaxed." He rested his arm along the back of the buggy seat. Her shoulder was no longer rubbing against it, but she could feel her hair brushing his sleeve. If anything the suggestion of having his arm around her was even more disturbing. He probably knew it, but Victoria would never admit it. "What do you do, Victoria?"

  "Do? By that, do you mean am I gainfully employed?" She bridled at the question and forced a thin thread of calm into her answer. "The answer is no, I don't work at anything where I draw a salary. I'm involved in arranging a great many charity benefits and I do a lot of volunteer work at the hospital and with the elderly. I keep busy."

  "All that education going to waste," he murmured in subtle condemnation.

  "Education is never wasted," she defended. "I'm doing something that is both worthwhile and needed. If I had told you that I worked as a secretary or a teacher, you probably would have pointed out that someone else needed the job and its salary more than I did. You would have found fault either way."

  "You're probably right," Dirk conceded, eyeing her with a considering look.

  "I know I am." Victoria stared straight ahead, her jaw clenched in an effort to check her growing anger.

  "Unmarried, no engagement ring, no men friends, no lover—at least I haven't seen any evidence of one. You are a beautiful woman, Victoria, what's the matter? Are you frigid or training to become a nun?" He was deliberately baiting her and sitting back with amusement to watch the result.

  "No to both! At the moment I don't happen to be dating anyone steadily. As yet I haven't found a man I want to spend a whole day with or a whole night, let alone the rest of my life! To me, marriage isn't like a dress that you throw away when you get tired of it. When I get married it's going to be for keeps. I know it would be better press if I were a jet-setter involved in a lot of scandalous affairs, but that's not me!" She glared at him with icy gray eyes. "I don't care if you consider me a freak."

  "Rare, but I wouldn't say a freak." There was quiet contemplation in the steady regard of his eyes, but his reaction otherwise was unreadable.

  Victoria had had enough of being on the sharp end of his pointed questions. It was time he had a taste of his own treatment.

  "What about you? What makes you tick?" she challenged. "Tell me about your life!"

  "It's your typical hard-luck-kid-growing-up-in-the-streets story with his mother sick in some dingy apartment," Dirk shrugged but with a harsh bite to his self-mockery. "I always worked. Sometimes the job was legal; sometimes it wasn't. Vacation to me only meant that I didn't have to go to school. I had to work at two full-time jobs to make it through city college, so I never had time to study to make the grades that might earn me a scholarship. But I got into a university and took all the courses I could on journalism, speech, and television. Eventually I obtained my degree."

  "Then what?" Victoria prompted and refused to let herself feel any pity for him.

  "I couldn't get a job. I ended up working on a weekly newspaper in a little burg outside Washington, D.C. When I wasn't setting the press or bugging the advertisers or taking want ads, I wrote articles that I started submitting to the editorial pages of big newspapers. That was the beginning of my column. So you see—" Dirk glanced at her, a faintly sardonic expression on the handsomely carved features "—my life story is very boring. What about yours?"

  Boring? It sounded like a determined struggle to Victoria, a determined struggle by a tenacious fighter. But she doubted that her opinion would mean anything.

  "Mine is just as simple. I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and I've been collecting them ever since," she retorted.

  Unexpectedly, Dirk laughed. Equally unexpectedly, Victoria found herself joining in.

  Chapter Five

  THE HORSE-DRAWN TAXI stopped at the curb by the white-fronted buildings that marked the commerical district. Dirk climbed out of the buggy first and turned to help Victoria down. She reached for his hands, but they circled her waist instead to lift her out of the buggy. Clutching the lilac in one hand, Victoria gripped the flexed muscles of his upper arms for balance. When he slowly set her on the ground, she ended up sliding the last couple of inches against his chest with his hands deliberately forcing her that close. The contact with his hard, lean body had her pulse beating wildly. Victoria quickly pushed some distance between them and thanked the driver. She hurried onto the covered sidewalk by the storefronts.

  "Are you late for an appointment?" Dirk's voice taunted her haste.

  Victoria pivoted, summoning her composure to come to her rescue. "No, I…" She glanced to the street just as a carriage filled with tourists pulled away from the ticket office, the fringe on its top swinging with the rhythm of the trotting horses. "I was just getting out of the way of the tour carriage."

  "Oh." It was a disbelieving sound, but Dirk didn't pursue her lie. "Where shall I meet you?" He joined her on the sidewalk, drawing her to one side so they would be out of the pedestrians' way.

  "There's no need for that," Victoria insisted with an offhand shrug. "Whenever I'm through with my shopping I'll make my own way home. I don't expect you to wait for me."

  "But I might not make my way back." He tipped his dark head to one side. The prospect appeared to amuse him.

  "This is an island. How could you get lost?" she laughed.

  "I'm not taking any chances. Where shall I meet you?" Dirk persisted.

  Victoria hesitated for an instant, then gave in.
"Eleven-thirty at the Grand Hotel," she said and immediately started to walk away.

  "Where is that?" he asked.

  "You can't miss it. It boasts the longest front porch in the world," she called over her shoulder.

  Before she looked to the front again, she saw his half salute of acknowledgement. Victoria didn't have much shopping to do. A stop at a drugstore made all her purchases—shampoo, polish remover, and cotton balls. She wandered along the sidewalk, looking in windows and entering a few places to say hello to shop owners she had known since childhood.

  When eleven-thirty drew near Victoria found her steps turning eagerly toward the Grand Hotel. She deliberately slowed them. She would be acting like Penny if she wasn't careful. But the silent admonition had no control over the way her heart somersaulted when she saw Dirk leaning against one of the pillars of the long white porch. She immediately looked away to pretend an interest in the bright yellow and red carpet of the flower beds. Her hand trailed along the yellow railing that lined the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street from the hotel. She crossed the street at the hotel's main entrance and climbed the steps to the famous porch. Dirk was there, having traversed the length of the porch to meet her.

  "Did you get your shopping done?" His dark eyes glanced to the single package in her hand.

  "Yes, I did," she nodded.

  "Are your parents expecting us back for lunch?" Since his question didn't have a simple answer, Victoria hesitated and Dirk immediately guessed. "Obviously they aren't. So, why don't we have lunch before going back?"

  Victoria was on the verge of refusing when she heard herself agreeing. "But only if we go dutch," she added.

  "I wasn't going to buy your lunch. I was going to let you buy mine." The corners of his mouth were pulled down to form smiling grooves in his cheeks.

  "Oh, you were?" Victoria laughed, not certain whether she should take him seriously.

  "Yes, you can afford it more than I can," he replied.

  "Oh, come now," she chided. "Your column is syndicated in practically every major newspaper in the country. You are very successful."