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They looked at each other across the airplane quilt. Rick spoke around the sudden lump in his throat. “It was kind of you. To go to the trouble to fix up the room for him.”
“No trouble. Really.”
“You’ll let me reimburse you.”
“No, I won’t.”
He started to protest.
She put a finger to her lips. “Shh. Not another word about it.” She turned for the door. “Now, come on. We haven’t finished unloading the car yet.” And she was gone, leaving him no choice but to follow. Which he did, after a moment spent grinning like a idiot at the airplane mobile rotating slowly in the slight breeze created by the air-conditioning vents.
Within half an hour, Rick had all of his and Toby’s things put away and his car parked next to Natalie’s in the big garage on the south side of the house.
Natalie was showing him where to put his groceries when he told her he wanted to take the Lady Kate out onto the lake for a picnic lunch.
“That okay?” he asked.
“Of course. Sounds like fun.”
Rick picked up the last bag, which was full of packaged goods, and headed for the laundry room and the small pantry closet there.
Natalie watched him go, reminding herself, as she’d been doing ever since the man and the boy arrived, that Rick was the tenant and she was the landlady. And that was all.
The problem was, Rick seemed even more attractive now than he had two weeks ago. His eyes seemed bluer, his shoulders broader. And every time he smiled at her, her stomach did the strangest things.
Her thoughts on Rick and not much else, Natalie went to the refrigerator and took out a package of deli-sliced ham, some spicy mustard and a big jar of kosher-style dills.
“What are you doing?” Rick asked. He was standing in the short hall from the laundry room.
She froze and looked down at the food in her hands.
And it came to her: She’d been about to make him some sandwiches. She was the landlady and he was the tenant and nothing in the rental agreement said a thing about meals. And yet he’d mentioned the word lunch and she’d automatically started making it.
She was just a hopeless case—that was all there was to it. Get her near an available man, and the first thing she did was start fixing his food for him. It had been that way with Joel. She’d loaned him money when he was short—some of which he never had paid back. She’d graded his papers and cleaned his little cottage in town. She’d bought his groceries when she bought her own—and then been waiting for him every night when he showed up at her door with his dirty laundry under his arm and “What’s for dinner?” on his lips.
Rick clearly had no clue of the direction of her thoughts. He was grinning. “Lunch is already made. I stopped at a deli before I left Minneapolis.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. They even put it in a nice big picnic basket. It’s got everything—including paper plates and plastic forks. I left the basket on the front porch. Maybe you didn’t see it.”
She sincerely prayed that her face wasn’t as red as it felt. “Um. No, I guess I didn’t.” Very carefully, she set the sliced ham back in the meat drawer and the mustard and pickles on a shelf and closed the refrigerator door. “Listen. I’ve got a few things to do. I should probably just get busy on them.”
He folded his arms and leaned against the little section of counter that projected off the wall to the laundry room. “Damn. I was hoping you’d come with us.”
Her heart lifted. It was ridiculous. She had to get a grip on herself here. “You were?”
“Yeah.” He was wearing a dark blue knit shirt and khakis. The shirt clung to the hard contours of his shoulders. And with his arms folded like that, the muscles of his biceps were starkly defined. And his dark hair was so shiny, it even curled a little. It was the kind of hair any woman would want to run her fingers through. And he had the nicest mouth. It was firm, but there was fullness to it. Natalie thought that it would probably be a wonderful mouth for kissing—a mouth that could command and beguile at the same time.
“Natalie.”
“Um. Yes?”
“Come with us.”
“Oh, I really shouldn’t. You know how it is, when you have so many things to—”
“Please?”
And her own mouth just opened and she heard herself say, “Okay.”
He stopped leaning on the counter. “Great.” He looked so cool and collected.
And she realized that she felt sticky and grungy in her old cutoffs and sweaty T-shirt. “Listen. Could you give me a few minutes? To clean up a little.”
“Take all the time you need.” He started walking toward her.
She backed away, all nerves and confusion. She shouldn’t be going with him. She shouldn’t have said yes. He was renting her house for a couple of months, she reminded herself for what had to be the hundredth time. And that was all that was supposed to be going on here. “A few minutes. Really. I won’t be long.”
He stopped in the middle of the kitchen. “I’ll go out and hunt down Toby and the dog.”
“Yes. Do that. Good idea.” She backed around the central island that contained the stove, and then just kept walking backward toward the main hall. Rick watched her go.
As soon as she lost sight of him, she realized how silly she must look, walking backward through the hall. So she turned around, squared her shoulders and marched, head high, up the stairs.
She came down twenty minutes later, freshly showered and dressed in white shorts, a red silk camp shirt and a pair of sandals. The shower and the change of clothes had helped a lot. She felt much more in control of herself—until Rick smiled at her and told her she looked great and she felt like a tongue-tied teenager all over again.
They all trooped down to the dock out back and into the boathouse where Rick put the lunch basket in the big galley of the cabin, and then got a quick lesson in how to operate the boat from Natalie. Since no one planned to water-ski, they left the smaller boat behind.
For their first time out, Natalie backed the Lady Kate from the slip inside the boathouse, so that Rick could see how it was done. Then, once they were launched and pointed in the right direction, she turned the wheel over to Rick.
Several miles out, they turned off the big engine and let the boat drift. Rick brought out the lunch. More than once as they devoured the lemon roast chicken and pasta salad, Rick teased Toby that Bernie would get fat if he didn’t stop slipping him treats.
“And look how big he is already,” Natalie said. “If he gets fat, he’ll fall through the floor of the farmhouse.”
“He’ll sink the boat,” Rick warned.
Natalie couldn’t resist adding, “The dock will collapse when he wanders out onto it.”
Toby just looked at them—and gave Bernie the last hunk of his dinner roll.
When they’d eaten their fill, the child and the dog stretched out on the deck, while Natalie and Rick made themselves comfortable on the padded benches that lined the bow. They leaned on the railing and gazed off at the shoreline, picking out the houses that could be seen here and there between the trees.
“There. Look. That’s my family’s estate.” Natalie pointed at a huge green expanse of lawn on a faraway bank. The lawn swept up to a graceful stone balustrade and a wide terrace. Behind the terrace loomed an imposing Greek Revival-style house, its many windows glittering like jewels in the afternoon sun.
“Impressive,” Rick said.
A wave of sadness washed over Natalie. Once, the huge house had been like a second home to her. But now, with her father living there alone save for the small army of staff the place required, it just wasn’t the same. She’d spoken to her father two days before, when she’d asked him to send help to switch the furniture around for Toby. He’d sounded awful—distracted and distant. In spite of her determination to steer clear of family turmoil, she hadn’t been able to stop herself asking him if he was all right.
He’d laughed; it had been a grim, depressing sound. And he’d told her not to believe everything she read in the papers, that he was getting by.
Now, she found herself telling Rick, “When I was a little girl, it seemed as if we used to spend more time in that house over there than at our own house in Minneapolis. We’d come out on weekends, even in the deepest heart of winter, when the grounds were covered in a blanket of white and we had to spend most of the time indoors. And in the summer, we’d sometimes come and stay for weeks at a time. Grandma Kate and Grandpa Ben lived there together, right up until he died, about ten years ago. When I was little, my aunt Rebecca— She’s Grandma Kate and Grandpa Ben’s youngest. Maybe you’ve heard of her?”
“Rebecca Fortune…the mystery writer?”
“That’s the one. Anyway, Aunt Rebecca was still a child, too. So she lived at the estate. And my uncle Nathaniel used to bring his family for visits, the same as my dad and mom brought us—all the time. So the place always seemed like it was full of kids. Overflowing with activity. Laughter and happy shouts just bounced off the walls.”
Rick was watching her, smiling a little. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
“Three sisters, one brother.”
“A big family.”
“You actually sound jealous.”
“I am,” he admitted. “I was an only.”
“You wanted siblings?”
“You bet I did.”
She couldn’t resist confessing, “There have been times I would have gladly given away one or two of mine.”
“Which ones?”
“Is that a fair question?”
“Natalie. Come on.”
“Oh, all right. The twins. Allie and Rocky.”
“Allie’s the model.”
“Yep. And Rocky looks just like her. They’re identical. Two of the most gorgeous women in the world—even though Rocky never went in for the glamour route. She’s a pilot, like Grandma Kate.”
“Why would you have given them away?”
“Did I say that?”
“Come on. Spill it.”
She laughed. “All right. Because I was so jealous of them, that’s why. They always had each other, no matter what else went wrong. They had that thing that identicals so often have. A world of their own. It was sometimes as if they could read each other’s minds, you know? And even though they were two years younger than me, which should have given me some kind of edge over them, I was the one who felt left out.”
“So you were jealous of their closeness.”
“Yes. And that’s not all.”
“I’m listening.”
And he was. Listening. So intently. As if he really cared. She felt her cheeks coloring. “Why am I telling you all of this?”
“Because I asked. Go on.”
“It’s not important.”
“Natalie.” He looked at her levelly. “I want to hear it.”
She believed him. She shouldn’t, she knew it. But she did. She heard herself confessing, “Well, to me it always seemed that, between the two of them, Allie and Rocky were perfect.”
“Perfect?”
“Um-hm. They seemed to have every single desirable trait that I lacked. Beauty and courage, a spirit of adventure, an air of excitement that followed them both wherever they went. And you know what?”
“Uh-uh.”
“They’re both still like that. Gorgeous and brainy and brave and exciting.” She rested a hand on the bench cushion and leaned toward him. “And Caroline, my older sister, is no slouch, either. The truth is, I’m the boring sister.”
He faked a groan. “Are you fishing for compliments?”
She thought about that, then confessed, “Sure sounds like it, doesn’t it?”
He leaned toward her, so there were only inches between their noses. She caught a hint of his after-shave, a fresh, outdoorsy scent, and found herself thinking that he smelled every bit as good as he looked.
He said, “You are not boring.”
She sighed. Rick was a terrific guy.
Too terrific, a voice way back in her mind warned, to ever want or need someone like you.
She had to get some distance. Fast.
She shifted back away from him. “We should either drop the anchor or start up the engine again. We’re getting a little too close to shore.”
They started the engine. Toby, who’d been sitting on the deck with Bernie, got up and stood proudly beside his father as Rick took the wheel. At a cove Natalie knew, they dropped the anchor.
When she and Rick were settled on the padded bench once again, Natalie found herself asking him, “Are your parents still alive?”
Rick shook his head. “They died when I was in my teens. An electrical short that started a house fire. Late at night, while we were asleep. I woke up and managed to get Mom out, but couldn’t find Dad. A neighbor saved me, but they… neither of them made it.” He looked out over the water.
Not stopping to consider whether such a move was wise, she laid her hand on his. “How sad for you.”
He looked down at where she touched him. “It was a long time ago. I went to live with my aunt and uncle, but they didn’t have kids, either. Anyway, I always wanted a bunch of brothers and sisters. But you know what they say, if wishes were horses…” As his voice trailed off, he looked up into her eyes. Then, slowly, he turned his hand and wrapped his fingers around hers.
Natalie was stunned. It seemed at that moment like the most intimate thing any man had ever done to her—to turn his hand and take hers and look right into her eyes as he did it. Suddenly, the day seemed terribly hot, the air unbearably close and humid against her skin. And the hand that held hers was so warm and encompassing, sending little shivers zinging through her.
She realized he was smiling at something behind her. “What?” she asked, turning.
Bernie was stretched out on the deck, asleep. And Toby had used the dog as a giant-size pillow. The big brown-and-white belly cradled the small, dark head. The boy’s eyes were closed, and his thin chest rose and fell in an even, shallow rhythm.
