Tidewater Lover

by Janet Dailey

  "I knew it," he answered, nodding. "I'm just wondering how you found out. I suppose you've been snooping around the house this evening."

  Lacey counted to ten swiftly. "Margo Richards happens to be my cousin."

  "Really?" he said with jeering skepticism.

  "Yes, really." She forced a smile.

  "Then where is your cousin now?"

  "She and her husband flew to Florida to visit his family before leaving on a Caribbean cruise. That's why I'm here, so the house won't be standing vacant while they're gone," Lacey said with all of the righteousness of the wronged. "You're the trespasser, not I."

  "And Margo asked you to stay here?" he repeated, drawing his head back to study her as he let go of her arm.

  "Yes."

  "Her husband Bob asked me to stay," he told her.

  "What?" Lacey was taken aback for a minute by his statement, then she shrugged it away. "You don't honestly expect me to believe that."

  "Believe it or not, it's the truth." He reached into the pocket of his khaki-colored top and took out a pack of cigarettes, calmly lighting one while Lacey stared at him with disbelief. "I don't know your cousin Margo very well —" he blew a thin trail of smoke into the air "— but Bob's family and mine have been friends for years."

  "Can you prove that?" she challenged. "Bob should be with his parents now. Why don't you call him?"

  "I've already explained that the telephone is dead. They had their service interrupted while they're on vacation. That's the main reason I agreed to stay here — to get away from the telephone."

  "Then you can't prove you know Bob," Lacey concluded.

  He studied the glowing tip of his cigarette. "Do you know where they went on their honeymoon?"

  "Yes," Lacey admitted, but she wasn't about to be trapped. "Do you?"

  "To Hawaii. The first day there Bob stayed out in the sun too long and spent the next two days of their honeymoon in the hospital with sunstroke."

  "He did ask you to stay in the house!" she exclaimed in a breathy voice.

  "That's what I've been telling you."

  "And you claim you've been staying here since Thursday night?" Lacey frowned.

  "Not claim. I have been staying here — in the guest bedroom," he replied.

  "But so have I." She ran her fingers through the thickness of her short hair. "Oh." Pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. "Oh!" They began fitting together rapidly.

  "Oh, my gosh," she whispered, and turned the full force of her brown gaze on him. "Did Bob give you the key to the front door in person?"

  "No, he left it for me."

  "Where? Exactly where did he say it would be?" Lacey persisted.

  "He said it would be under the mat, but I —"

  "You found it in the flowerpot, right?" She finished the sentence for him. "Yes." It was his turn to frown. "How did you know?"

  "Because that's where Margo said she would leave me the key, only I tripped over the mat and saw the key underneath it, so I didn't bother to look in the flower-pot," she explained.

  There were other things she remembered, too, that backed up his claim that he had been in the house since Thursday. "It must have been your car I heard leaving on Friday morning," she murmured aloud.

  "I left around six-thirty, quarter to seven," he admitted.

  "And it was your orange juice glass I washed," she went on.

  "I was late." She could see by the absent look in his eyes that he was recalling the events of that Friday morning, too. "I had orange juice and didn't bother with coffee until I reached my office. But I didn't see you here."

  "I was out on the balcony having my morning coffee. It's all so incredible!" Lacey declared, moving blindly back to one of the sofas and sinking on to its cushions. "I went to bed early both nights and slept like a log."

  "It was nearly midnight Thursday and Friday before I came in," he added.

  "And when you came in tonight I thought you were a burglar." She laughed briefly.

  "And I thought you were some college girl sleeping in the first empty house you found," he chuckled in return.

  "What a mix-up!" Lacey shook her head. "I wonder if Bob and Margo have discovered yet that they each asked somebody to stay in the house."

  "I doubt it." He walked to the fireplace, flicking the ash of his cigarette into the smoldering remains of the fire.

  "I guess it doesn't matter," she sighed, smiling at the humor she could now see in the situation. "They're in Florida anyway. There isn't much they can do to put it right now. It's up to us to straighten it out."

  "It's too late to do anything about it tonight." Picking up the poker, he put it back in its stand. "Tomorrow is plenty of time for you to pack."

  "Me?" Lacey squeaked in astonishment.

  "Naturally you." He glanced over his shoulder, seemingly surprised that Lacey didn't agree.

  "Why 'naturally me?'" she demanded.

  "If I'd been a burglar tonight, exactly what could you have done?" he reasoned. "There isn't a neighbor close enough to hear you scream."

  "'I don't care," Lacey insisted stubbornly. "I'm on vacation. This is a perfect spot and I'm not leaving."

  "If it's a vacation on the beach you want, go and check into a hotel." He regarded her with infuriating calm, his roughly hewn features set in completely unrelenting lines.

  "Presuming, of course, that I was able to get a reservation at this late date, I couldn't afford two weeks in a hotel," she retorted. "I'm staying here. You go."

  "I'm not," he answered decisively. "Thanks to some incompetent …" He cut off that sentence abruptly and started another. "Business demands are not going to permit me the luxury of a vacation. The most I can hope for is to get away for a few hours now and then where I can't be reached by telephone. This place is ideal."

  The corner of his mouth then lifted in a wry smile. "I don't even know your name."

  "Andrews. Lacey Andrews."

  A wicked glint of laughter sparkled in his eyes. "You are the redoubtable Miss Andrews?"

  "I beg your pardon?" She tipped her head to one side, staring at him in total confusion. Why had he put it that way?

  "Where do you live?" he asked unexpectedly.

  "I have a small apartment on the outskirts of Newport News. Why?" Except for that glittering light of amusement dancing in his blue eyes, his expression was impassive and enigmatic.

  "Where do you work?"

  What does that have to do with anything? Lacey thought crossly, but answered in the hope that he would eventually satisfy her curiosity.

  "I'm a secretary to a construction engineer in Newport News."

  The wicked glint became all the more pronounced. "'I am not claiming Mr. Bowman is out. I am stating it,'" he mimicked unexpectedly.

  Three

  * * *

  Lacey's mouth opened and closed. "You … you aren't Mr. Whitfield, are you?" she accused with breathless incredulity.

  "Cole Whitfield." He identified himself with a mocking nod of his head. "At last we meet face to face instead of via a telephone."

  Stunned, Lacey stared at the tall, broad-shouldered man standing in front of the fireplace. Strong, carved features carried the stamp of a man accustomed to having authority over others. Lacey recognized that now.

  His hair was brown, darker than her own, an umber shade that bordered on black. Yet there was a decided virility about him, an aura of sheer maleness that Lacey would simply never have associated with Mr. Whitfield.

  Over the telephone he had been as abrasive as rough-finished steel coated with a winter morning frost. Her mind's image of Mr. Whitfield did not resemble this vital, compelling man at all. Lacey was still gaping when his firmly molded mouth moved to speak.

  "Don't I come up to your expectations?" he asked mockingly.

  She found her voice long enough to croak, "Hardly."

  "What did you think I would be? An ogre with three heads?" Cole Whitfield inquired, his voice husky with contained amusement. "I
left the other two heads at the office."

  "You are the rudest, most caustic man …" Lacey began, quite evenly, to describe the man she had known as Cole Whitfield.

  "If you had as much money, mine and investors', tied up in that building as I do and had suffered the delays that I have, you'd be snapping at everyone, too," he interrupted without a trace of apology for his behavior.

  "And that's your excuse?" she declared indignantly.

  "No, it doesn't excuse my attitude, Lacey." Cole Whitfield used her Christian name with ease. "But it does explain why I'm in such desperate need for some peace and quiet before it becomes impossible for me to live with myself. By the way —" his deeply blue eyes were laughing again "— redid you ever find those toilets?"

  "I know quite a few places where they're not, but there's a tracer out on the shipment." A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, but she refused to let it show. She hadn't completely forgiven him for his rudeness. "There should be a more definite word by Monday afternoon."

  "But you're on vacation, so you won't be there." He tossed his cigarette into the fireplace, momentarily releasing Lacey from his vaguely disturbing gaze. "Which brings us back to our present impasse."

  "Who stays and who goes." Her chin jutted forward to an angle of battle.

  Cole Whitfield saw it and rested an elbow on the mantelpiece, an indolent gesture that seemed to indicate his own entrenchment.

  "Since we're both prepared to be stubborn, I think the solution is for both of us to stay." Lacey arched an eyebrow, more in surprise than rejection of his proposal. "After all, we've already spent two nights together under the same roof," he reminded her.

  There was one point she wanted clarified before she considered his suggestion seriously. "Are you rephrasing your invitation to share your empty bed?" she questioned frankly.

  "You are alluding to my comment earlier, aren't you?" He smiled. "At the time, you struck me as being a slightly naive and frightened college girl, and propositioning you seemed the quickest way of making you take flight." There was a brief, negative shake of his head. "I'm not interested in sex. I'm here for the peace and quiet. Although —" his gaze skimmed over her scantily clad figure "— if you make a habit of wandering around in that state of near-undress, I might exercise a woman's prerogative and change my mind," he added with a mocking inflection in his voice.

  His allusion to her sex sent an odd tremor quaking through her nerve ends. Hastily she raised the drooping neckline of her pajama top and tucked the torn strap under her arm, but there was nothing she could do about the brevity of her nightclothes or the bare expanse of shapely leg and thigh they revealed.

  "Part of it's your fault," she retorted defensively, referring to the torn strap.

  "'Entirely by accident," he assured her. "Well, what do you say?"

  "You just said you wanted peace and quiet. Why are you willing to have me stay here, too?" Lacey wanted to know.

  "My previous encounters with you may have been brief, but they left me with a lasting impression. If I tried to insist that you leave, I'm certain you would fight to the last breath, and I've had all the fighting and arguing that I want. Besides, I'm tired," he admitted, and Lacey noticed the lines of strain around his mouth. "I would much rather come to an amicable arrangement that would suit both of us. We're civilized adults. You are an adult, aren't you?" he asked sarcastically.

  "I'm twenty-four," she declared.

  Again he gave her the once-over. "You look older."

  "Thanks a lot!" A faintly angered astonishment ran through her voice. She was usually accused of not looking her age instead of the other way around.

  "Probably wishful thinking on my part," he sighed tiredly, and looked away. "It's just that you look so damned seductive sitting there like that."

  An uncomfortable flush warmed her cheeks. "I'll get a robe," she murmured, and started to scramble off the sofa, tightly clutching the bodice of her pajamas.

  Cole Whitfield moved to block her path. "Don't bother."

  Immediately his mouth thinned impatiently. "What I mean is —" he started to put his hands on her shoulders, then stiffly drew them back to his side "— if you agree with my solution, there's no reason why we can't turn in for the night. In separate rooms, of course," he joked tightly.

  "I …" Lacey hesitated.

  At close quarters, his inherent virility suddenly held a powerful attraction. And if, as he had implied, he had felt a similar reaction to her, wouldn't rooming together under a supposedly platonic agreement prove to be volatile and unworkable?

  "I know what you're thinking," he said quietly — and strangely Lacey believed that he did. "Things could only get sticky if we let them. I may be ill-tempered at times, but I still have control over my baser instincts. And so, I'm sure, do you."

  He was right. A smile flickered over her lips as she found humor in her silly apprehensions. They were both adults. The situation couldn't get out of hand unless they permitted it.

  "Does that smile mean yes, roommate?" The corners of his eyes crinkled, although the line of his mouth remained straight.

  "Yes," she nodded.

  "Fine. Then what do you say we bring this conversation to an end so I can get some sleep?" Cole Whitfield suggested lazily.

  "Right." Lacey smiled. "Good night," she said, and moved past him to the hallway leading to her bedroom.

  Three-quarters of an hour later she was lying in her bed, dead tired yet unable to fall asleep. She fought to lie still and not toss and turn with her restlessness.

  The previous two nights, when she hadn't known Cole Whitfield was sleeping in the next room, she had slept like a baby. But now, knowing he was there, she discovered she wasn't quite as nonchalant about it as she had thought she would be. Good grief, she could even hear the squeak of his bedsprings when he moved.

  You're being immature, she scolded herself silently, and forced her eyes to close.

  It was a long time before she was able to ignore his presence in the house and drift into sleep. In consequence it was past midmorning before she awakened, vaguely irritable from having slept too late.

  Grabbing her cotton housecoat from the foot of the bed, she pulled it on as she hurried toward the bathroom In the hall she stopped face to face with a bleary-eyed, tousle-haired Cole, also en route to the bathroom.

  His dark blue eyes made a disgruntled sweep of her and she felt a moment's relief that she had changed into her long-legged silky pajamas of turquoise blue. He couldn't accuse her of not being substantially covered!

  The same couldn't be said for him, she realized as she became rather painfully conscious that below that naked expanse of his tanned chest he was wearing a pair of jockey shorts. She had often seen her two older brothers similarly attired, yet it wasn't quite the same when the man was Cole Whitfield.

  There was a sardonic twist of his mouth as he gestured toward the bathroom door. "Ladies first." Then he retreated unself-consciously into the second guest room.

  Lacey darted into the bathroom, her cheeks burning like a schoolgirl's. Cold water from the tap was more effective than the silent chiding words she directed at herself. With her face washed, teeth brushed, and light makeup applied, she emerged from the bathroom.

  A glance into Cole's room saw him sitting on the edge of the unmade bed, his dark head resting tiredly in his hands.

  "I'm all through," Lacey told him, with considerably more poise regarding his state of dress. "It's yours now. I'm going to put some coffee on to perk."

  "Good." He sighed deeply, rubbing his hands over his face before rising.

  In the kitchen, she filled the coffee pot with water and spooned fresh grounds into the basket. Water was running in the shower when she plugged the electric percolator in. She had plenty of time to dress before Cole was finished in the bathroom, so she poured a glass of orange juice and climbed on to one of the tall stools at the counter to drink it.

  As she finished the juice, she heard the water being turned o
ff in the shower. Sighing, she slid from the stool and started to her room.

  She was halfway across the living room when the front doorbell rang. Changing her direction to answer it, she shrugged. It was probably someone to see Margo and Bob.

  Descending the steps, she paused at the front door to look out through the peephole. A man and a woman stood outside, but Lacey couldn't see enough of them to recognize them as anyone she knew. She opened the door a crack.

  "Yes?" She smiled politely at the pair.

  They were complete strangers to her. The woman had beautiful long wheat blond hair, and makeup precisely applied to her striking features. Her green eyes registered shock at the sight of Lacey standing on the other side of the door.

  Her clothes were casual, white slacks with a vividly red print top. On the blonde they looked chic — the only adjective Lacey could find to describe her impression.

  The man, taller with sandy blond hair, seemed first surprised to see Lacey, then amused. He was very good-looking, but she suspected he was probably conceitedly aware of the fact.

  She opened her mouth to explain that Bob and Margo were on vacation, but the woman spoke before she had the chance.

  "We must have the wrong address, Vic," she declared in an icy tone. She would have turned to leave if the man hadn't taken hold of her elbow to keep her at the door.

  Without glancing at the blonde, he directed his curious gaze at Lacey. "We're looking for Cole Whitfield. Is he here?"

  Lacey became tense, suddenly aware of all the embarrassing connotations that could be read into her presence in the house alone with Cole all night. But what did it matter? She had done nothing to be ashamed of, so why act like it?

  "He's here." She opened the door wide to let the couple in. "Follow me."

  She started up the stairs with the unnaturally silent pair behind her. Just for a minute Lacey wished she had dressed instead of having orange juice, but it was too late now.

  As they passed the landing, the attractive blonde asked with a somewhat superior air, "Are you the housekeeper?"

  To any other question Lacey would have probably answered politely, with an explanation of the circumstances for her being in the house. But that one grated. She half turned on the stairs, a hand on her hip, and gave the woman a deliberately cool and amused look.