by Janet Dailey
Since they were already underway, she couldn’t delay their departure by lingering in bed. Dawn pushed aside the covers and climbed out to wash quickly and dress.
The skyline of Key West was an indistinct blur on the horizon when she joined Slater at the bridge. “Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked, raising her voice to make herself heard above the engines.
“No point.” He shrugged, dragging his gaze from the water long enough to aim it in her general direction.
A swirling wind whipped her hair across her face. She turned into it so it would blow it back. The idyllic days seemed to be gone and they were rushing back into the world where it wasn’t all love and tranquility.
“I guess the honeymoon’s over,” Dawn said, but she didn’t think it had been loud enough for Slater to hear. She was wrong.
“Nothing lasts forever,” he stated.
Maybe that was it, she decided as buildings began to take shape on the horizon. Maybe things had been too perfect, and she had been foolishly expecting them to stay that way. Maybe, last night, both of them had been resenting it couldn’t always be as sublime as it had been in that tropical cove.
An hour later they had docked and loaded their suitcases in the trunk of the Corvette. Slater helped her into the passenger seat, then walked around to slide behind the wheel. He still seemed preoccupied and withdrawn, even when he looked at her.
“Where do you want me to drop you off?” He inserted the key in the ignition and started the motor. “At home or your parents’?”
For a stunned second, Dawn couldn’t answer. “Aren’t you coming home?”
“No.” His patience seemed worn. “I told you I had business to handle. I’m going to drop you wherever you want to go and head straight for the office.”
“I know that’s what you said.” There was a hint of sharpness in her answer.
“Well?” Slater prodded. “Which is it?”
“Take me home.” It was amazing how he could whip an answer out of her when she wanted to burn him with her silence.
The Corvette seemed to speed through the streets, not slackening its pace until it swung in the driveway of the “Conch-style” house. While Dawn dug the key out of her purse, Slater lifted the suitcases out of the trunk and set them by the sidewalk. When he slid behind the wheel and shut the door, Dawn stared at him in a kind of angry shock.
“Aren’t you even coming in?” she demanded.
“No.” He glanced at the suitcases sitting by the walk. “They aren’t heavy. You should be able to manage them.”
It wasn’t the suitcases she had been thinking about. This was their new home. She thought he might carry her over the threshold, but she wasn’t about to mention it and possibly have him laugh at her for being so foolishly romantic.
The honeymoon was over in spades.
Chapter Ten
Opening the oven door, Dawn pulled out the rack and lifted the lid of the roasting pan. The rump roast was more than done; the meat was separating in chunks. She added a glass of water to try to keep it moist, turned the oven thermostat to warm, and slid it back into the oven.
“Boy, that smells good,” Randy groaned in a complaining tone. “When are we going to eat? Do we have to wait until Dad comes home?”
In private, he’d taken to calling Slater “Dad,” although it was done rather self-consciously when he was in his presence. Dawn felt Slater had been gone so much that his absence had contributed a lot to Randy’s occasional unease with him.
“Don’t you think we should wait?” she asked, appealing to his sense of right.
“It depends on how late he’s going to be,” Randy grumbled.
Breathing in deeply, Dawn had to concede that it wasn’t an unfair condition. If they waited much longer, the meal would be ruined. She moved to the wall telephone.
“I’ll call him and find out how soon he expects to be home. If he’s going to be too late, we’ll eat without him.” She picked up the receiver and dialed the number.
It rang three times before it was answered. “MacBride.” His curt voice sounded in her ear, its sharp, clipped tone becoming all too familiar to her.
“Are you still at the office?” she said, trying to sound light and amusing.
A heavy sigh came over the line, weary with exasperation. “I’m busy, Dawn. Why are you calling? If it’s just to check up on me and make sure I’m not with someone else, then why don’t you drive by my office and spare me these interruptions?”
She gritted her teeth and didn’t respond to his biting sarcasm and irritation. “Randy’s hungry. He wants to know what time you’ll be home for dinner.”
Instantly she was angry with herself for putting the onus of the call on their son. She was more interested in the answer than Randy was—and more deserving of an explanation for why they saw so little of him.
“It’ll be late. Don’t wait dinner for me. I’ll send out for something to eat,” Slater informed her that she needn’t keep anything warm for him. “Tell Randy good night for me.”
Which meant he wouldn’t be home before eleven o’clock. “I’m beginning to feel like an abandoned bride,” she laughed brittlely, because it seemed the best way to keep the tears at bay.
“Don’t tell me Simpson never had to work late at the office,” he chided unkindly.
“Not night after night,” she shot back, her hand trembling from its tight grip of the receiver. Not caring how rude it was, she hung up the phone with a sharp click. She took a couple of seconds to regather her poise before turning to Randy. “He said not to wait dinner, so we can go ahead and eat.”
“When’s he coming home?” Without being told, Randy went to the cupboard to take down the plates and set the table.
“Not until very late. He said to tell you good night.” There was an underlying threat of tautness in her otherwise light-sounding voice.
“Gosh,” Randy sighed. “I thought it’d be different after you two got married and we all lived in the same house. But I’ll bet I saw him more before you got married.”
“He’s been busy,” she defended Slater’s absence to Randy even if she had her own doubts about the necessity of it. “It won’t always be like this.”
“I hope not.” His mouth twisted grimly as if he didn’t have much hope things would change.
When they had first returned from their honeymoon, Dawn had been willing to concede that Slater had a lot of work that he needed to catch up on, so she had accepted his late nights without complaint. Sometimes she woke in the middle of the night and found him asleep in bed with her, but half the time she never heard him come home—or leave with morning’s first light.
His attitude remained preoccupied, sometimes—like tonight—his lack of patience turned him sarcastic. Naturally with Randy, he was friendly and warm. Dawn was the one bearing the brunt of whatever was bothering him. She doubted that she could take much more.
On Sunday morning, Dawn could hardly believe it when she wakened at seven and discovered Slater had already risen. She hurried to the window and saw the Corvette in the driveway below. It seemed a rarity to discover he hadn’t already left the house. She dressed hurriedly in a pair of white jeans and a red-checked blouse, applied a sparing amount of makeup, ran a comb through her hair, and ran down the stairs.
She found him in the living room, sprawled in an armchair with the sections of the Sunday newspaper strewn around him. His shuttered gaze flicked to her, then back to the article he was reading. A cup was sitting on the lampstand.
“Coffee?” She presumed it was made since the evidence seemed to indicate he’d already had at least one cup.
“I’ve had plenty. Thank you,” he refused. “I think I’ll get myself a cup,” Dawn announced unnecessarily and turned to leave the room.
The clumping thud of Randy running down the steps checked her as she waited for him to come down. When he was around, things didn’t seem as tense.
“Good morning.” He was always bright and chipper i
n the mornings. “What’s for breakfast?” And hungry.
“What would you like?” Dawn gave him his choice.
“Pancakes and sausage.” Randy didn’t have to think about it.
“Slater?” She turned to him. “The same for you?”
“No, I’m not hungry,” he refused again. “I’ve already had some toast and juice.”
“Say, Dad—” Randy sauntered over to the armchair where Slater was seated, “—can we go out on the boat today? You’ve been saying we would—one of these weekends.”
“Not today.” He folded the section of paper he’d been reading, laid it aside and reached for the next. “I have to go over to the resort later on. I’ll be tied up most of the afternoon.”
“Ah, not today, too,” Randy complained.
“Surely you can take one day off,” Dawn argued.
“If I didn’t feel it was necessary, I wouldn’t be spending my Sunday working,” Slater countered. “The subject is closed.”
The paper crackled as he snapped it open. Aware of Randy’s crestfallen expression, Dawn curved a protective hand around his shoulder and turned him toward the kitchen.
“Let’s fix some breakfast,” she said.
Neither of them spoke as they walked to the kitchen. While Dawn put sausage links in the skillet to fry, Randy set the table. She took down the pancake flour to whip up a batch.
“Would you bring me the milk from the refrigerator—and an egg?” she asked.
The door opened and shut behind her while she measured out the mix. Randy appeared at her elbow, holding an egg. “There’s no milk.”
“I used the last of it last night,” she remembered with a disgruntled sigh. “Bring me my purse. It’s on the counter over there. You can ride your bike to the corner store and buy a quart.” Randy started over to the side counter. “Wait,” Dawn called him back. “I used the last of my cash to pay the paperboy. I’ll get it from your father. Watch the sausage for me.”
Wiping the pancake dust from her hands with a towel, Dawn walked swiftly into the front room. Slater was still engrossed in the paper.
“We’re out of milk. I need to send Randy to the store to get some,” she explained. “Will you give me some money? I’m broke.”
There was a long, cool look from his gray eyes. Something like contempt touched his mouth as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of bills. When she started toward his chair, he tossed them to her. They separated and drifted to the floor like green leaves settling to the ground.
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Slater challenged.
When she finally ripped her gaze away from the money at her feet, she glared at him. She made no move to touch it or pick it up.
“Hey, Mom! Should I—” Randy came running in from the kitchen.
“Go outside and play, Randy,” she ordered.
“But—what about the milk?” He saw the bills scattered on the floor. “What’s all that money doing there?”
“I said go outside and play!” Dawn repeated herself more sharply.
Randy backed up a step, looking from his mother to his father, finally sensing the explosive tension in the room. Then he wheeled, and headed for the front door. It slammed shut behind him. Dawn had a glimpse of him out the window, his arm hooked around a veranda pillar, his head hanging low as if his world had come to an end.
Her temper was trembling on the edge of fury as she knelt down and began picking up the money with false calm. “Would you mind explaining to me what this is all about?” She held up a wad of bills to indicate what she meant.
The newspaper was shoved aside, all pretense of reading it abandoned as Slater pushed to his feet. The hard angles of his features were whitened at the edges with barely controlled rage.
“No more games, Dawn,” he snapped. “Don’t pretend that isn’t what you wanted when you know very well it is! Now you’ve got it.”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded.
“I’m talking about you. You’re probably going to turn out to be the most expensive lay in the country,” he charged viciously. “Well, there’s your money. Payment in full for your services. And enjoyable they were, too.”
She straightened to stand erect, her head high and hot tears stinging her eyes. “Just exactly what do you think I’ve done?” Her voice was strained with the effort to keep it level.
“I can’t keep up this farce any longer,” he sighed heavily. He was angry, but it was a tired kind of anger. Dawn could see the haggard and worn lines etched in his features from too many nights with too little sleep, but she couldn’t feel sorry for him. “You married me for money. Well, now you’ve got it.” Slater flung a gesturing hand in the direction of the money she held. “Sorry it isn’t more than that, but I don’t carry a lot of cash on me.”
“Is that really what you believe?” Dawn asked with a hurt and incredulous frown. She breathed out a short laugh as she looked down at the money, her eyes blinking aside the tears. Events were becoming clear to her. “All this started that last night on the beach when I told you Simpson hadn’t left me any money. I knew you had changed toward me, but I didn’t know why.”
“It was clever of you to wait until after we were married to mention that little detail,” Slater said with dry sarcasm that seemed to mask his pain.
“The irony of this is that I was beginning to wonder if you were upset because you had married me for the money,” she admitted her brief suspicion. “And you were angry because you hadn’t allied yourself with wealth. I kept telling myself it was absurd, but I never dreamed you would come to this ridiculous conclusion.”
“Is it so ridiculous?” he challenged. “Don’t forget I know how much you wanted money. You threw us away to get your hands on it. When I think what a fool I’ve been, believing all that garbage about marrying again for love.” He swung at right angles from her, running a hand over his hair and gripping the back of his neck. “I’m the one who’s been saying it, then letting myself believe that it came from you.”
“Love is the reason I married you,” Dawn insisted.
“Love for me or love for money?” countered Slater.
“How can you even ask that question?” she demanded with the wad of money crumpled in her rigidly clenched fist. “We honeymooned together. Every minute of it was wonderful. Surely you could tell how much I love you.”
“You’ve had so much practice faking your feelings that you probably wouldn’t know a real emotion when it came your way.” He shook his head in disgust, unimpressed by her show of evidence. “You played the loving wife for so long with Simpson, you probably don’t know how to act any other way. He may have preferred the pretense, but I don’t.”
“Slater, don’t you know that I never stopped loving you?” Dawn was at a loss as to how to convince him. There was a part of her that rebelled at the idea she had to try.
“Maybe I have trouble believing you ever loved me in the beginning,” he replied with weary flatness. “If you loved me, how could you marry someone else?”
“What I did was wrong. I learned that very quickly, but the damage had already been done.” She struggled with the unpleasant memories. “I suppose it was wrong to stay married to Simpson after I realized what a mistake I’d made. But I’d made my bed and I thought I had to stay in it.”
“It must have been a low blow when he didn’t leave you anything,” Slater taunted.
“I didn’t want anything!” Dawn flared.
“Contesting the will would have meant a long, legal court fight, not to mention a very expensive one. How much easier it was just to find yourself a new sucker—me.” His laughing breath was loaded with self-derision. “I swore I wouldn’t let myself be fooled by you again. But you had me all set up just right, didn’t you? You had a hook waiting for me no matter which way I went.”
“No—”
But he didn’t allow her to finish. “When Simpson died and you found out you were broke again, you must have l
ooked around for the most likely candidate. And there was good ole MacBride. You knew he had been crazy about you—and there just might be some smouldering coals left in him. He had become something of a success—not filthy rich but on his way up. And the coup de grâce, you had borne him a son, a little secret you’d kept all this time.”
“I should have told you. I’ve already admitted that,” she reminded him angrily. “I came back here so the two of you could get to know one another. And that’s the only reason I came back! It wasn’t to trick you into marrying me so I could get my hands on your money.”
“You made me believe that once, but I won’t be persuaded again,” Slater declared with a long, heavy look. “If it means anything, I have finally come to terms with who and what you are. A leopard can’t change her spots—and you are a cat of the first order.” His gaze flicked to her flaming hair.
“How do you know she can’t?” Dawn challenged. “Did you ever ask a leopard?”
“It’s no use, Dawn.” There was a hard finality in his voice. “You were right when you said a couple couldn’t stay together because of a child. And I can’t live your lie anymore.”
“It isn’t a lie,” she insisted with cold anger. “But if you don’t believe that, then you can’t love me.”
“It seems we’ve reached a fork in the road.” He sounded calm, painfully so as far as Dawn was concerned.
“It seems we have.” She tried to match him and strained for a cool nonchalance that kept wavering on bitterness. “You claimed to have urgent business to attend to, so why don’t you go take care of it. I’ll pack your things and have them sent to the boat this afternoon.”
“Fine.” There was a rigidness to his jaw.
“And I shan’t be asking for any financial settlement from you,” Dawn asserted. “If you feel you should contribute something to Randy’s support, then follow your conscience and pay whatever you feel is fair.”
“You’re fighting right down to the last second, aren’t you?” Slater accused tightly, a glint of reluctant admiration in his gray eyes. “It’s a great gesture to subtly make me wonder whether I’ve been wrong about you all along.”
