The Second Time

by Janet Dailey

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” she promised, and signaled that they had lingered there long enough by turning her bike around in the driveway to head onto the street.

  At the supper table that evening, Randy monopolized the conversation with a detailed account of their afternoon bike ride and managed to work in a subtle reminder of Dawn’s promise.

  “We stopped to look at this old house,” he told his grandparents. “You should have seen the place. It was all overgrown with weeds and flowers. A girl you went to school with lived there, didn’t she?” He pulled her into the conversation.

  “It was the old Van de Veere place,” Dawn explained while she ladled a spoonful of conch chowder to her soup bowl. “Do you know who owns it now?” She glanced at her mother with idle curiosity.

  There was an almost stricken look on her mother’s face, but her silence was covered by her husband, whose red hair had long ago turned white. “Doesn’t that belong to—”

  “I don’t think so,” Reeta Canady interrupted him quickly, throwing her husband a quelling look that was linked to the glance she darted at Randy. “I think some speculator from the mainland bought it, but I’m sure it’s on the market, Dawn. You could check with one of the realtors.”

  “I’ll do that,” Dawn said, battening down the suspicions that had sprung to life at her mother’s behavior.

  “Are you thinking about buying the place?” inquired her father. “It’s built solid as a rock.”

  “Yeah—” Randy rushed in with an affirmative answer.

  “At the moment, it’s mainly curiosity,” she insisted, although the possibility hadn’t lost its appeal.

  It wasn’t until after the meal was finished and Dawn was helping her mother clear the dishes from the table that her suspicions were confirmed. Both Randy and her father were in the garage workshop.

  “Who owns the Van de Veere house?” she repeated the question she’d asked earlier.

  “Slater MacBride,” her mother admitted with a long look. “I nearly shoved a fritter in your father’s mouth to shut him up from saying anything in front of Randy. I swear he talks and thinks afterwards.”

  “Why did he buy it?” Dawn wondered aloud as she absently stacked the dishes on the counter next to the sink.

  “I imagine just for the investment,” her mother shrugged. “He owns quite a bit of property, residential and commercial. Slater has done very well for himself. I—” She saw the pained look on Dawn’s face and stopped, changing what she had started to say. “I’m sorry. But who’s to say if you had married MacBride instead of Simpson, whether he would have turned out to be the same way,” her mother offered in consolation.

  “I know,” Dawn sighed, but it was a case of knowing now what a precious gift love could be and how foolish she had been to think wealth was more valuable. For a long time, she had been reconciled to living with regret for the rest of her life, but that didn’t stop it from hurting once in a while.

  “After the wedding, Slater was—almost obsessed with making money,” her mother explained with a kind of sadness in her voice and expression. “Every bit of money he earned or could beg, borrow, or steal he put into his deals—gambling everything on venture after venture.” She shook her head, as if in reflective despair. “Eventually, I guess it became a habit.” Lightly, she trailed her hand over the shimmering firelights in Dawn’s hair, a gesture that reminded Dawn instantly of her childhood when her mother had stroked her hair, comforting her over some hurt. “But the money didn’t make him any happier than it did you.”

  “It never makes anybody happy.” There was a grim twist of her mouth into a rueful smile.

  “Are you going to contact him about the house?”

  Dawn turned on the faucets to fill the sink with water. “I don’t think Randy will give me a minute’s peace until I make some effort to find out about it,” she declared on a humorless laugh. “And I guess it will give me a legitimate reason to call him . . . test the water before I have to plunge in.”

  “It would be a bit awkward to simply walk up to him and inform him about Randy,” her mother agreed.

  “That is an understatement.” But Dawn was fully aware that she had put off contacting Slater long enough. There was no more reason to delay the moment that had to be faced. “I’ll telephone him in the morning.” Still, she gained herself one more night.

  After reading the same paragraph twice without concentrating on what it said, Slater sighed in exasperation and started it a third time. Before he had finished the first sentence, extremely long in typical legal fashion, he was distracted by the opening of the door to his private office. Slater glanced up from the legal contract, irritated by the interruption. Nearly everything irritated him lately.

  The instant he recognized his secretary, Helen Greenstone, his attention reverted to the document in his hand. Helen, a woman in her fifties, efficient, capable, new to the area, and a grandmother, walked over to his desk.

  “There is fresh coffee made. Shall I bring you a cup, Mr. MacBride?” She was a stickler for formality, insisting on a show of respect for her employer who was nearly young enough to be her son.

  “Yes, thank you.” He glanced briefly at the correspondence she placed on his desk, letters requiring his signature. The telephone rang. The line of his mouth thinned at the second interruption. “Answer that for me.”

  Without a word, she reached for the telephone on his desk and punched the necessary line before picking up the receiver. “Mr. MacBride’s office. May I help you please?” There was a pause for a response by the calling party. “Mr. Mac-Bride?” She sent a questioning look at him to see if he wanted to take the call.

  “Find out who it is.” If it wasn’t important, he didn’t want to be bothered with it at the moment.

  “Who’s calling, please?” Helen Greenstone requested, then covered the mouthpiece with her hand to muffle her voice. “It’s a Mrs. Lord.”

  Dawn. The identity of the caller shot through him like a lightning bolt, freezing him motionless for a split second. In the next, he wanted to grab the phone from the woman and hear Dawn’s voice for himself. Anger tightened him that she could still generate that kind of reaction in him.

  “Find out what she wants.” Slater denied himself the sound of her voice, not totally trusting himself at that moment.

  For the last four days, he’d been wondering if he’d see her or hear from her, if she’d have the nerve to contact him after all this time. Now that it had happened, he realized it had been like watching a burning fuse on a stick of dynamite and waiting for the explosion, not knowing when it would come. It finally had. Now there were the reverberations.

  “What did you wish to speak to him about?” Helen asked. “Perhaps I can help you.” There was another pause during which she glanced at Slater. “The Van de Veere house? Yes, it’s for sale.”

  A shaft of anger plunged hotly through him at the thought of her calling him about a house!

  “I’m certain I can arrange an appointment with Mr. MacBride to show you the house,” his secretary stated and opened his appointment book, tapping a finger on the one o’clock slot to see if that met with his approval. He nodded curtly. “Mr. MacBride is free after lunch. Would one o’clock be convenient for you, Mrs. Lord—at the Van de Veere house?” She smiled at the receiver. “Thank you. Good day.” She hung up the phone and jotted the meeting on his calendar for the day. “I’ll bring you some coffee,” she said and started to leave.

  “No.” It was a brisk refusal, which Slater quickly followed with an ambiguous explanation. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want any.”

  He focused his gaze on the legal contract he was studying as if it had all his attention. When the door closed behind his secretary, it strayed to the name written on the sheet in his appointment book. Slater stared at it for a long time.

  Dawn was slow to replace the telephone receiver on its cradle. Her nerves were so raw she wanted to scream and release some of the tension th
at was building up inside her. There was a keen sense of hurt, too, because she hadn’t expected to be fobbed off onto his secretary. Once she’d identified herself, she had thought she’d be put right through to Slater. Instead, she’d been forced to carry through the charade of looking at the house.

  “Who were you talking to just now, Mom?”

  Startled, Dawn swung around to stare at her son. She thought he was outside. Had he been listening? Was it merely the gleam of curiosity in his eyes, or the sharpness of foreknowledge? She reached out to smooth the cowlick on his forehead.

  “I was making an appointment to see the man about the house you and I looked at yesterday,” she admitted, smiling stiffly and excluding the information that the man was his father. A change of subject was needed. “It won’t be long and you’ll be as tall as I am.”

  “My dad is tall, isn’t he?” The quietly asked question nearly undermined her.

  “Yes,” Dawn replied with an attempt at smoothness that didn’t completely succeed. “Six foot. So you have a few more inches to grow yet.”

  “When are you going to talk to him about the house?” This time he changed the subject. Or so Dawn hoped.

  “One o’clock this afternoon.”

  “Can I come with you?” he asked.

  “No.” She smiled to make her refusal seem less important than it was.

  There was a flicker of disappointment, but it was soon replaced by a resigned acceptance. “I might go looking around the shops in Old Town after lunch. Is that all right?”

  “Sure.” Her smile widened with his failure to pursue coming with her.

  At lunch, Dawn was too nervous to eat, her stomach churning in anticipation of the meeting with Slater. Pleading a lack of appetite she excused herself from the table and went to her old room to get ready.

  It wasn’t easy choosing what to wear. The near-tropical summer climate dictated lightweight clothing, but there was still the choice of casual, sporty, sophisticated. Thanks to Simpson’s generosity during their marriage, Dawn had an abundant wardrobe to choose from.

  After several false starts, she settled on a seersucker suit, white with thin blue stripes, and a plain silk blouse in sapphire blue. Her sandaled heels and purse were a matching shade of blue to complete the ensemble. Luckily Dawn had kept the good pieces of costume jewelry, selling only the gold and the jewels, so she slipped a couple of rings on her fingers and a pair of earrings.

  The mirror said the finished product looked subtly elegant and slightly businesslike. The curling thickness of her rich auburn tresses lay casually about her shoulders to soften the effect. Her expression looked a little tense, a tautness to her mouth, but it was to be expected under the circumstances.

  When she left the house, she waved at her mother who anxiously wished her good luck. The moral support was gratefully received. There was no sign of Randy as she reversed her car out of the driveway, so she wasn’t forced to tell him again that she didn’t want his company.

  If it hadn’t been for the afternoon heat, the distance to the Van de Veere house could easily have been walked, but Dawn didn’t want to spoil the freshness of her appearance. The dashboard clock in her car, another gift from Simpson his estate hadn’t been able to claim, showed two minutes before the hour when she turned into the driveway.

  There was no other vehicle parked there, and no sign that anyone was around—or had been around. As she climbed out of the car, her nerves were jumping and her breath was running shallow and fast. The sidewalk to the front door was nearly impassable. Dawn had to lift encroaching branches and vines aside to reach the steps.

  A breeze stirred the palm, the spiked fronds rustling together. There was a reassuring solidness to the veranda floor as she crossed it to try the front door. It was locked, eliminating the possibility that Slater was inside waiting for her. Dawn turned, looking back to the driveway and suddenly wondering if he would come at all. Or would he thwart her by sending someone else to show her the house? A quiver of unease went through her.

  From the street, there was a loud purr of a powerful car engine approaching the house. When a low, sleek Corvette turned into the driveway, a tingle of mixed relief trailed over her nerves. It stopped behind her car and the motor was killed. The minute the driver stepped out, Dawn no longer had to wonder whether Slater would come himself. He was here.

  Long and lean, his familiar body had retained that easy flow of movement that came with being in prime physical condition. His profile was strongly cut and sun-bronzed, and his gilded brown hair was slightly rumpled by a playing wind. A pair of sunglasses hid his eyes, but she knew he’d seen her standing on the wide veranda.

  There was an instant’s pause before he removed them and tossed them through the opened car window onto the seat. Without another glance in her direction, Slater wound his way through the tangle of underbrush encroaching on the path to the steps.

  In those first seconds, she was struck by all the things that were familiar about him. But as he came closer, she became aware of the changes. No more faded jeans, worn soft to hug his thighs, no more T-shirts stretched thin to mold his flatly muscled chest and shoulders, no more soiled sneakers without socks on his feet.

  The way he was dressed was a stark contrast to the past. From the fine leather of his polished shoes to the continental cut of his brown slacks and the print silk shirt tapered to fit, Slater MacBride was the model of what the successful man looked like . . . casual—the shirt unbuttoned at the throat—and confident.

  The softness of youth was gone from his features, that love of a good time which had once creased it with eagerness. Maturity had brought a hard definition to the male angles of his face, adding more emphasis to virility than to mere handsomeness.

  But all the changes were unquestionably improvements. All her senses, everything inside her seemed to rush out, reaching for him. It was like a torrent being unleashed, a torrent of love and regret that seemed to spill from her in waves, yet she never moved, never took a step forward to greet him, and never changed her expression. The tumultuous reaction was all contained inside. Dawn had learned too well, during her marriage to Simpson, how to hide her true feelings.

  When she finally met the flint-gray in his eyes, she was glad she hadn’t begun the meeting on an emotional note. The aloofness in his gaze was chilling. When she finally spoke, she felt she was literally breaking the ice.

  “Hello, Slater.” Her voice was smooth and even. “It’s good to see you looking so well.”

  “Thank you.” He inclined his head at the compliment with a thick trace of mockery. “Or, perhaps I should say ‘thanks to you.’” The barbed correction was accompanied by a challenging flick of his brow, but he continued smoothly without waiting for a response. “I’d like to take the opportunity to offer you my condolences on the untimely death of your husband.”

  She doubted it was a sincere offer of sympathy, but she didn’t question it. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  His gaze made a sweep of her. “I expected to find you elegantly clad in black, Mrs. Lord—the grieving widow mourning for her beloved husband.” There was a mocking twist of his mouth. “But these days, I guess not even the rich follow the custom of wearing black.”

  “That’s true,” she admitted, refusing to take offense at his thinly veiled jibes. She had not arranged to meet him to take part in a war of words, with herself constantly on the defensive, so she was determined not to parry any of his sharp thrusts. “It’s no longer considered improper to wear other colors.”

  “Pity. You would be stunning in black,” he murmured with a lazy glance at her fiery mane of hair, but his coolness took any hint of a compliment from his voice.

  Dawn was stiff, trying to keep in check the natural instinct to defend herself from his subtle attack. “I’ll try to remember that,” was the most indifferent reply she could make, but even it betrayed that his stinging comments were getting through.

  “You have a slight accent,” Slater observed.
>
  “Have I?”

  “After living so long in Texas, I guess it’s to be expected,” he said with an uncaring shrug, then smiled. “But you don’t need to be concerned. A little drawl is very sexy, but then—it goes with the body, doesn’t it?”

  Despite the rake of his eyes, Dawn had the feeling Slater didn’t find her at all sexually appealing. It seemed he had crushed out every feeling for her. Had she really thought it would be otherwise? She dug her long nails into her palm, resisting the impulse to slap him and hurt him physically the way he was hurting her mentally. Any other response was impossible so she made none.

  Her silence seemed to irritate him, however briefly. “I believe you were interested in this house.” He reached in his pocket for the key and moved past her to unlock the front door. “I only acquired the property recently so I haven’t had the opportunity to have the yard cleaned up and the house put in order. Naturally the price will be reduced to compensate for its neglected condition.” Pausing, he pushed the door open and turned to hold her gaze. “That is, if you are actually interested in purchasing it?”

  It was the skepticism in his eyes that prompted Dawn to put him through the formality of showing her the house, although she had serious doubts that a sale would ever come to pass. For a moment she wanted to forget about her true purpose in meeting him and avoid all this unpleasantness. But she recognized it was a selfishly motivated desire. There was Randy’s need to consider as well.

  “I am interested,” she stated and walked past him to enter the house, stale and musty from being shut up for so long—like their relationship. Perhaps an airing was all that was needed for them, too. Dawn suspected that was purely wishful thinking.

  Chapter Three

  Dust had naturally accumulated on the windowsills and floors. A cupboard door or two in the kitchen had swelled shut, but there were no major things wrong. None of the ceilings showed any signs of roof leakage. There weren’t any rust stains from leaky water pipes. Without furniture in the rooms or curtains at the windows, the house had a starkness to it, but now and then Dawn caught traces of the character she remembered as Slater toured her through the rooms.