Where was the sense of intimacy that ought to have enveloped both of them in a warm cocoon this morning? she wondered. Only hours ago she had felt incredibly close to Elias. Now there was a disturbing distance between them.
She was all too well aware that her experience of sex was not what anyone would call extensive, and it was several years out of date. Her responsibilities to Truitt had imprisoned her in an artificial cloister for years. This was, in fact, the first time that she had ever actually stayed the night with a man and shared breakfast with him the next morning. Nevertheless, her instincts told her that it shouldn’t be like this between the two of them.
Something very special had happened between them last night. Elias had let her see a piece of his soul.
But things were all wrong today. He was back in his remote, self-contained universe. She could not touch him the way she had touched him last night.
He had said that there would be no more games, but this morning she felt as if they were both back out on the playing field.
She stifled a small sigh and looked down at the interesting concoction in her bowl. “What is this?”
“Muesli. My own recipe. Oats, rye, sesame seeds, almonds, dried fruit, yogurt, and a touch of vanilla and honey.”
“So much for keeping breakfast noncompetitive.” She added milk to the muesli and picked up a spoon.
“When I stay the night with you, I’ll fix breakfast,” he offered with suspicious generosity.
Charity coughed and nearly choked on a bite of cereal. She put down her spoon and grabbed the small teacup.
“Are you okay?” Elias asked.
She nodded quickly and swallowed tea to clear her throat. “Fine. Just fine. Sesame seed went down the wrong way.”
He regarded her with a long, steady gaze. “Does the thought of me spending the night in your bed make you nervous?”
“Of course not.” She gulped more hot tea. “Don’t be ridiculous.” With a heroic effort she summoned a confident smile. “But I’m sure neither one of us wants to rush things. We’ll take our time. Let the relationship develop naturally.”
His eyes narrowed faintly. “I thought we agreed last night that there would be no more games.”
She felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “Letting a relationship mature and develop at its own pace is not considered game-playing. It’s just common sense.”
“What’s wrong, Charity?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” She let the smile drop. “I’m just trying to sort things out, that’s all.”
“What’s to sort out?”
Anger flared out of nowhere. “You have to ask me that?” She set the teacup down so hard that it threatened to crack. Otis grumbled at the noise. “You’re the one who’s been acting as if nothing out of the ordinary happened last night.”
He gazed at her for a long while. “About last night.”
She held up a hand. “Please. If this is the part where you tell me not to read too much into what happened between us last night, forget it. I’m trying to eat my breakfast. You can give me the lecture later.”
“No.”
“You want to go back to playing games, fine. Go play with yourself.”
“That idea lacks a certain appeal,” he said dryly. “Especially after last night.”
She felt herself turn red. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes. But I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to say here.”
“Hah. That’s what you think. I understand exactly what you’re trying to say.” She tapped her spoon on the edge of the bowl. “You want to tell me that you weren’t yourself last night, don’t you? That I shouldn’t assume too much because of what happened. That you’re sorry we spent the night together.”
He hesitated. “You’ve got it half right. I wasn’t in a good place last night.”
“Uh-huh.” She stabbed her spoon into the muesli.
“I wasn’t expecting you to show up. I had a lot of thinking to do.”
“And I interrupted you?”
“To be blunt, yes, you did. It would have been better if you had not come into the garden when you did.”
“Sorry about that.” She spooned up a mouthful of muesli and chewed with a vengeance. “Won’t happen again.”
He frowned. “You don’t get it.”
“Sure, I do. I’m an ex-CEO, remember? I can boil down even the most complicated issues into simple concepts. Problem? You wish I hadn’t shown up last night. Solution? Simple. We’ll just pretend it never happened.”
“That’s not going to be possible.”
She smiled grimly. “Watch me.”
“You’re angry.”
She thought about it. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“Charity, I’m trying to get something clear between us.”
“Maybe it would be better if you just ate your breakfast instead.”
He ignored that. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I regret that you interrupted me while I was in the middle of a contemplation session last night. I was trying to sort out some things. I think that you might have drawn some false conclusions based on what happened after you showed up.”
She halted the spoon halfway to her mouth, as realization dawned. “Wait a second. I think I’m getting a glimmer here.”
“Let’s just say that it would not be wise for you to assume that my actions last night indicated that I was—” He broke off, frowning.
“Weak? Normal?” She paused delicately. “Human?”
A dark flush stained his fierce cheekbones. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression, that’s all.”
“Elias, think of this in terms of your water philosophy. You can’t stay in the shallow end of the pool all of your life, thinking you’ll be safe. Sometimes you just have to take a chance and jump in at the deep end.”
“That analogy is not an appropriate application of the philosophical principles of Tal Kek Chara,” he said through his teeth. “The Way is a method of seeing clearly. A guide to observing reality.”
“But you’re not an observer. You’re a participant. At least you were last night.”
“You’re missing the point here.”
She leveled her spoon at him. “Okay, enlighten me, oh, great Master of Tal Kek Chara. Take a look into your magic reflecting pool and tell me what you see happening between us right now at this very moment.”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do,” he said swiftly. “I don’t want you to be under any misconceptions about me. I realize that my behavior last night may have given you the impression that I allowed Keyworth’s attempt at suicide to get to me.”
“Didn’t it?”
“His attempt to take his own life was an unforeseen consequence of my actions.” A harsh, bleak acceptance burned in Elias’s eyes. “And I don’t like it when unforeseen consequences occur. It means that I failed to use Tal Kek Chara correctly.”
“Hey, nobody’s perfect.”
“That is no excuse,” he shot back.
“Elias, it’s not your fault that Keyworth tried to commit suicide. But if it’s going to eat at you like this, I suggest you do something about it.”
“Such as?”
She hesitated, thinking quickly. “You could go see him, I suppose. That would be a start. Talk to him. Make your peace with him.”
“And just how the hell do you suggest that I do that, Madam Therapist? What am I supposed to say to a man who tried to kill himself because of me?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been in a situation like this. Maybe you need to tell him that you don’t want the past to repeat itself. Does he have children?”
“A son who hates his guts.”
Charity nodded. “Tell Keyworth not to do to his kid what your parents did to you.”
“My parents.” Elias looked thunderstruck.
“Tell Keyworth he’s got no right to abandon his son. That if he really wants to atone for what happened all those years ago on Nihili, he must
fulfill his responsibilities in the present.”
Elias stared at her. Charity could almost see him gathering himself, searching for the center, summoning his power. She thought she caught another fleeting glimpse of the beast of loneliness prowling within him just before the barriers solidified and shut her out.
“You don’t know enough about the situation to make a suggestion like that,” Elias said in a voice that was more remote than the moon. “Forget about Keyworth. I’ll deal with it.”
“Sure.”
“About us,” he began deliberately. “I told you a few minutes ago that you were half right when you said that I regret that you came into my garden last night and that we spent the night together.”
“I think I can guess which half I got right. You wish I hadn’t seen you acting like a normal human being with your defenses down, but, what the hell, the sex was okay.”
“The sex was a lot better than okay.”
She managed a cool smile. “Yes, it was, wasn’t it?”
He pushed his uneaten muesli aside and folded his arms on the low table. “It might have been better if we had waited to begin our relationship under more auspicious circumstances. But what’s done is done.”
“That’s certainly a charmingly romantic view of our little night of passion.”
“What I’m trying to say is that, while I wish it had happened at a different time, I don’t regret that we’ve moved to the next stage of our relationship.”
Charity looked at her watch. “Good grief, it’s nearly eight o’clock. I’ve got to run home, change, and get ready to open the shop at ten.”
“Charity—”
“I’ll see you at the pier.” She leaped to her feet, scooped up her bowl and spoon, and dashed across the room to dump them into the sink.
“Damn it, Charity, wait a minute.”
“Don’t forget, dinner at my place this evening.” She stepped into her sandals and yanked open the front door. “This is the big night for the Voyagers and their spaceships. Better bring a jacket. It’ll probably be chilly out on the bluff at midnight.”
She fled into the early-morning fog.
8
The currents shift without warning yet the surface of the water appears to he the same to the observer. In such a situation there is great danger.
—“On the Way of Water,” from the journal of Hayden Stone
Charity pounced on the perfectly shaped red bell pepper in the grocery store vegetable bin. “Gotcha.”
She slipped several more plump peppers into a plastic bag and placed her booty in the shopping cart.
Seizing the handlebar of the cart, she leaned into the task of forcing it down another aisle. It took considerable effort to keep the vehicle tracking in a reasonably straight line. One wheel kept veering off at a crazy angle.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she found the packages of dried seaweed next to the seasoned rice wine vinegar. She grabbed two envelopes full of the glistening, dark green sheets of nori and a bottle of the vinegar and dumped it all into the cart.
It hadn’t been easy selecting a menu for tonight’s dinner. Her main concern had been choosing recipes that called for ingredients she could count on finding at the Whispering Waters Cove Grocery. A year ago when she first moved into town, tonight’s menu would have been an impossible dream. But her intensive efforts to cultivate the store manager had paid off.
The real problem, she decided as she did battle with the recalcitrant cart, was not locating the ingredients for tonight’s dinner. The more critical issue was, why was she bothering to cook a meal for Elias Winters in the first place?
She was still simmering over their early-morning conversation. He had made it breathtakingly clear that he wanted to pretend that he had never shown her that vulnerable piece of himself last night. On the other hand, he was content to carry on with the sexual side of their relationship now that it had gotten off the ground.
Typical, Charity thought. It was just so damn typical.
No, that wasn’t fair, she decided as she reached for a package of rice and some soy sauce. Nothing about Elias could be called typical.
She glanced at her list. She still needed fresh fruit for the dessert. It was getting late. She had left Newlin in charge of closing Whispers while she took off to do her grocery shopping, but she still had a number of things to do before Elias arrived on her doorstep.
She muscled the grocery cart around a corner and saw another cart blocking her path. Jennifer Pitt had the door of the frozen food case open.
“Oops, sorry, Jennifer.” For some reason, Charity’s cart, which until now had fought her every inch of the way, suddenly took off like a thoroughbred racehorse. Charity dug in her heels and managed to drag it to a halt. “Didn’t see you.”
Jennifer smiled her cool, bored smile. “Don’t worry about it. These aisles are far too narrow. When things start to boom here in the Cove, I’d like to see a major grocery chain move into town. We could certainly use a decent store here.”
“This one’s not so bad. Just a little small.”
“You could say that about the whole damn town.”
Charity started to back out of the aisle. The last thing she wanted to do was get into an extended conversation with the second Mrs. Pitt. Jennifer was not a happy woman. Of course, it had not been an easy summer for her, what with the flamboyant first Mrs. Pitt flitting around town in her outrageous Voyager costume.
In Charity’s opinion, Jennifer had actually handled the whole thing with surprising grace. Perhaps the knowledge that she was the current Mrs. Pitt, not the ex, gave her the fortitude to rise above the awkward situation.
Jennifer was a tall, sleek, striking woman in her mid-thirties. Rumor had it that she had once done a short stint as a model in Los Angeles. Charity could well believe it. She had the height, and there was a certain kind of Southern California glamour about her. It whispered of hot beaches and endless summers. Everyone knew she worked out regularly on the home gym equipment Leighton had purchased for her. The results showed.
She had a sense of fashion that was alien to Whispering Waters Cove. Today she wore a silk shirt designed to imitate denim and a pair of beautifully draped trousers that flowed over the cuffs of her shoes.
Her honey-brown mane was streaked with a lot of golden highlights, as if she lived in perpetual sunshine instead of in the cloudy Northwest. She wore her big hair in a voluminous, shoulder-length style that always managed to look just slightly windblown. The large diamond that Leighton had given her on their wedding day glittered on her left hand. She always had a pair of stylish dark glasses perched on top of her head, and her makeup was flawless.
Most folks held the view that Leighton Pitt had never stood a chance once Jennifer set her sights on him. The biggest mystery in Whispering Waters Cove was not why he had divorced Gwendolyn to marry Jennifer. The mystery was why Jennifer had ever wanted to steal him in the first place.
True, Leighton was the most prosperous man in the Cove, but most people felt that, with her looks and style, Jennifer could have done much better for herself in Seattle. After all there was real money in the city, everyone pointed out, what with all the high-tech companies and the Pacific Rim businesses located there.
“I suppose you’ll be joining the crowd on the bluff at midnight tonight.” Jennifer’s long, red-tipped acrylic nails closed around a ready-made, low-fat entrée.
“Wouldn’t miss it.” Charity glanced curiously at the microwavable meal Jennifer had selected. It was a single-serving size. “Biggest show in town.”
“Which isn’t saying much, is it?” Jennifer’s crimson mouth twisted with just a hint of bitterness as she closed the freezer door. “Well, at least it will all be over by tomorrow. Gwendolyn’s Voyagers will finally realize that they’ve been had. Wonder what they’ll do about it when they find out they’ve been ripped off?”
Charity thought about it. “I suppose some of them might sue.”
Jennifer lifted
one shoulder in an elegant little shrug. “I doubt if that would do any good. I’m sure Gwendolyn and her friend, Rick Swinton, have made certain that the money is well protected.”
“Maybe nothing much will change after the spaceships fail to arrive,” Charity suggested. “A friend of mine says that people who want to believe in something will often go on believing in it even in the face of overwhelming proof that it doesn’t exist.”
“Your friend may be right.” Jennifer’s gaze shifted to a point just beyond Charity’s right shoulder. Her eyes narrowed. “Some people who turned over their savings to a swindler might prefer to continue to believe rather than to admit they’d been conned. But others might get a little pissed when they discover the truth.”
Without waiting for a response, she twirled her shopping cart around with a single-handed grip on the handlebar. The cart obeyed instantly. It never even wobbled. Under Jennifer’s guidance, it maneuvered down the aisle with the pinpoint precision of a fine European sports car.
Charity watched in admiration. Some people had all the luck when it came to selecting shopping carts.
“My, my. Little Miss California seems to be in a snit today,” Gwendolyn Pitt drawled behind Charity. “And you can bet she isn’t feeding that low-fat frozen dinner to Leighton. Oh, no. I expect that he’ll be clogging up his arteries with beer and nachos down at the Cove Tavern again tonight. Sweet Jennifer is probably hoping that he’ll conveniently drop dead from a heart attack.”
Charity turned reluctantly. Gwendolyn was in full Voyager regalia. Her long blue and white robes looked even more bizarre than usual against the mundane backdrop of a small-town grocery store.
The guru look was an interesting contrast to the shrewd, assessing expression in Gwendolyn’s eyes. Charity was fairly certain she could still see signs of the successful real estate broker beneath the exotic attire.
“Hello, Gwendolyn. Ready for the big night?”
“Of course. All the Voyagers are ready. We have been preparing ourselves for this night for months.” Gwendolyn watched Jennifer disappear around the corner of the aisle, and then she switched her sharp gaze to Charity. “I’m sure everyone in town will find it fascinating.”