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The other woman chuckled in a very amused way.
Then Sally said, “There she is!” And from the corner of her eyes, Amy saw Sally straighten and lift a hand up just above her head. She rose in welcome as another woman, in a traveling suit, came to the table to be hugged. Then she was greeted by others of the wedding guests before she was settled at Sally’s table.
“Matt will be glad you got here. He was sweating it. He wasn’t sure you’d come. I told him you’d have to be here to witness me actually getting married.”
Matt? Amy tried to remember what she’d heard about a Matt. Someone had said something about a Matt last night. Moving in with...
“Connie, do you care for him at all?”
Connie. Matt wanted to live with Connie, who apparently was reluctant. And Amy waited like a soap-opera fan to see what Connie would say.
Instead of answering, Connie asked, “Have the dresses arrived?”
Impatiently, Sally told her, “No! Your asking that means you’re not going to tell me about Matt.”
Quite primly Connie’s voice replied, “You’re not involved.”
In a teasing way of old friends and cousins, Sally pushed it, “I ought to get some sort of reply. Here we got up at this ghastly hour to welcome you! And anyway, you’re my maid of honor. You owe me.”
“I did come.” Connie was still formal and withdrawing. “Did you find any of Trilby’s bunch?”
“Who would dream any of Trilby Winsome’s winsome offspring could be so elusive. No one can find anything about five of the daughters. Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence and Ellen. They’ve vanished into...”
With opportunity knocking, Amy interrupted from her table to say, “I beg your pardon. I couldn’t help overhearing. This is a very strange coincidence, but my grandmother was Charity Winsome...Abbott.”
For an endless minute, the three women at the other table stared at Amy, then Sally smiled and questioned, “Really? Well, hello, cousin!” And the other two laughed and echoed the greeting.
Amy smiled, and with applaudable restraint, she returned to her meal. She was aware the other three women exchanged questioning looks and minute shrugs. But after that they talked more softly among themselves, more privately.
Having finished eating, Amy signed her bill. She rose from her chair, smiled at the other women, who smiled back, and left the dining room. She had planted the seed. What an interesting thing to see if it would germinate. She felt she had handled it perfectly.
As she left the morning room, Chas and...Tad, the bridegroom, came inside. Chas looked right through Amy. He didn’t even see her.
But as she went through it, she caught her arm on the door and stumbled as she looked back. She saw that he’d turned to watch her. She looked away immediately.
He wasn’t so indifferent to her, after all. Hah! If Chas only knew it, the preliminaries to their affair were progressing splendidly.
On her way through the quadrangle toward the beach, Amy went by the glass windows outside the morning room. She looked into the room from the slitted corners of her eyes.
She saw Tad was leaning over Sally, as Chas was moving Amy’s vacated table next to Sally’s, while Connie and Sally were talking and indicating Amy to the men. Amy walked on. With her last discreet glance, she could see both of the men had looked up through the windows at her.
Walking away, she smiled inside, with an odd lick in her lower stomach. If Chas only knew what she had planned for him! Ah, yes. Would he tremble in his Nikes? He had probably had affairs with every woman who caught his attention.
That would be the trick! She would have to catch his attention. Then she would lure him into bed the way men did women. She would use him for her entertainment.
But for now, she would have to wait.
The wedding party bunch were good-looking people. It would be nice to really be kin to them. Being an only child, Amy had always longed for a big family. Would they approach her?
She would be discreetly available if one of them did. They were so curious about Trilby’s children that Amy doubted if they could resist at least questioning her.
Since they knew nothing of that branch of their family, Amy could be quite easy about her replies. It’s too hard to remember lies. While keeping her own identity secret, she would tell the truth as nearly as possible.
With that premise to entertain her, Amy went out on the beach and walked leisurely south, down toward the pink palace. She found some sand dollars and was disgusted with herself for collecting two handfuls of shells. She had boxes of shells!
Collecting shells was like drinking beer. There is more beer in the world than anyone can drink so no one should try to drink it all.
There were also more creatures in the sea making shells than she could ever collect, and she ought to quit picking them up. Even as she thought of that, she stooped over and picked up another one! But it was another perfect one.
Trudging in the spent waves, Amy wondered what color were his eyes? Blue? With his hair that dark, they would probably be brown. He was beautiful. Formidable. She nervously licked her lips. Maybe she ought to just move to another hotel and forget this whole thing.
The plan was reckless. Were men this strained in the planning of a seduction? Or did they just take women as they came along without any qualms at all?
If men could manage, then she could handle it. Out of bed, anything men could do, she could do. Equality. By George, she wouldn’t be a quitter. She’d see the seduction through. She’d planted the seed of curiosity and it ought to grow.
By the time she arrived at the pink palace, sitting flauntingly on the beach south of the Trade Winds, Amy was experiencing a fresh feeling of determination. She turned back to retrace her steps along the beach.
She ruthlessly shoved her shells into her clean purple jacket’s pockets, washed the sand from her hands in the swirl of the waves, getting her sneakers wet. She squished along, her head bent to the mist. The lumps of shells in her pockets bumped in soft clinks against her thighs.
Besides Amy, there were other idiots walking the beach. However sparsely, there were others out. Therefore when a man’s muscular, gray sweat-panted legs came along in front of her, she moved to her right, but he matched her move and his Nikes stopped.
She looked up and...it was Chas! My God. His eyes were green! Very green. She simply stared.
“Hello, Amy Abbott. Or should I say ‘Cousin’?”
He was so cool. So adult. He was not one that any idiot would trick. This was the man she was going to trick? Uh huh. This one. She questioned, “Cousin?”
“You told Sally, Elaine and Connie that you’re one of Trilby’s issue.”
“No. I said my grandmother’s name was Charity Winsome. I only know that. I have no idea what Charity’s mother’s name was.” She watched as he smiled faintly. He knew she lied? She contrived to look honest and straightened her spine. A straight spine is always honest.
“Your eyes are blue.”
She nodded, admitting that.
His husky, deep voice said softly, “With your being a third cousin, that makes us kissing cousins.”
Her eyes became enormous over the idea of being kissing cousins with Chas. She was so bemused by it that she watched his head block out the rainy sky as he leaned forward and kissed her simpleton mouth. She simply allowed the opportunity to pass without doing anything!
Good grief! She stood there as if she was fourteen again and it was her first non-party kiss, for God’s sake. He lifted his head and smiled at her; and he had creases at the corners of his eyes that were enormously attractive. She took an unsteady breath as a part of her mind said: Hmm, this might be very, very nice!
“If your Charity is part of our family, her mother was Trilby Cougar Winsome. Trilby was my great-great-aunt. Apparently— from the stories— she was a pistol. Unpredictable. Are you that way, too?”
He knew! “No.” Her voice was thin. He couldn’t possibly know.
“I’m Charles Cougar. My friends call me Chas. So do cousins, Cousin Amy.”
“Cougar? Are you kin to Indiana’s John Cougar Mellencamp?”
“Cougar isn’t John Mellencamp’s real name. When he first started, his record company named him John Cougar. Our name comes down three hundred years from Billy Cougar. He was a hunter in the Appalachian system. He wore a cougar’s skin on his back with the cat’s head on his head. That’s how he got his name.
“We know he was a Brit. An Englishman. But we have no idea if he was a younger son come here to the New World to make his way, or if he was deported.” He grinned at her. “But he was a hunter, a trader and an organizer.”
“Yes.” She was still not working on all cylinders. She was distracted by the fact that she was trying to figure out a way to get another chance at a cousinly kiss. “How did you know my name?”
“I was in back of you when you registered.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t being too swift at conversational allure. If she planned to entice this man, she needed to be a great deal more sparkling and interesting. She inquired politely, “Did your wife come with you?”
He couldn’t prevent a laugh. He controlled it quickly, but he had laughed. He replied nicely, “I’m not married, are you?”
She solemnly shook her head, her eyes never leaving his. Why was he so amused?
“Let’s go back to the hotel,” he suggested. “It’s getting a little wet out here.” He took her arm, and they went on back.
The shells bumped against her thighs as she lengthened her stride to keep up. She felt like a fool. She ought to tell him right now she was a sham. Yes. She took a breath and said, “Ah...”
“You will come to the wedding? It’s going to be in those rooms off the lobby. With the fountains? Have you seen them? If it’s still raining, they’ll cover the roof so it’ll be warm enough. You will come?”
She nodded, still very serious, but she realized just how fragile this opportunity was. She needed to take hold and use it. No man would be tongue-tied and silent. He’d flirt a little and smile. Did men have to work this hard?
She stretched her mouth incredibly and managed a small grin. Then the whole ridiculous situation hit her funny bone, and she laughed. She boldly took his hand and pushed back her hood enough so that she could look up at him, striding along beside her, and she actually swung his hand a little as she laughed again.
He grinned back and his big, warm hand enclosed her small, cold, wet one. He was playing along! Did preying men feel this sense of exhilaration? But as she watched his smile, her eyes lifted to his, and his eyes were guarded. He was suspicious of her.
Did she look like a predator? A predator like some of the men who had pursued her? There are men who women instantly recognize as dangerous so they can avoid them. Had her intent changed her into something else? Had it changed her from the safe, businesslike woman into a huntress? Did her very pores smell of danger to men, telling them to beware?
And Amy considered that the men who looked predatory had probably once looked bland and safe. Criminals eventually had a look about them that was hard and scary. It could well be that women changed, too, as their life-style was changed, and...
Such thinking was all completely idiotic. She’d been working too hard. Her imagination had never taken control this way, before now. Of course she’d never before deliberately set out to seduce a man.
“Where is your home?” Chas asked.
She blinked once to come back to the reality of being with Chas. “Home? A suitcase. I travel.”
“Oh? And what makes Amy run?”
“I’m in research. Polls.” That wasn’t too far from the truth.
“That must be interesting. What do you ask?”
“Depends on what we’re researching.”
“House to house?” he inquired.
“That, too, depends on what we’re researching.”
“Phone banks? Boiler-room surveys?”
“Even that sometimes.” Her reply was also true.
“What is your firm?”
“Freelance.” She had to smile at his effort to pin her down. He probably would never fully know how adroit she had been in replying. Too bad. He would appreciate the game.
Now, how did she know he’d appreciate her intrusive game? If he knew she was being tricky, it would more than likely make him mad. Men didn’t like being fooled.
But what he liked didn’t matter. It was what she liked or wanted that mattered. And she could well decide to want Charles Cougar. Cougar. Men were supposed to walk like cats. He walked like a hunter of cats.
They separated to change into dry clothing and met in the glassed corner of her floor’s discreet nook of chairs and tables. He rose as she came around the corner to him, and he suggested, “Why don’t we go up on sixth and meet the others?”
“Others? There’re more of you?”
“Oh, yes. And not all of us could come. So there are even more of your newfound family for you to meet another time.”
He said “another time” so casually, as if there could be a future for them. “How many of you are there?”
“They all have kids so fast we ought to be called rabbits instead of cougars. I don’t know what the latest count could be. We’ll see if anyone on sixth knows. Come on. They’re dying to talk to you. And of course you’ll go to the wedding. Will you need a gown?”
She shook her head. He went on, “Some of the pools are heated. We might swim later, before supper. We’re on our own tonight. Do you play chess?” He gestured to the waist-high chess pieces on the clever brick board sitting idle in the soft rain.
Again she shook her head.
“Well, how about putting? When the rain stops, we can do that?”
She nodded. She’d been a runner up in a golf competition at their club during the summer she was twenty. She could handle golf.
He was telling her, “Tomorrow night’s the bachelor’s dinner in the main dining room. Everybody goes to the dinner. That’ll be fun. You’ll learn a lot about the family skeletons there. Tad’s family are nice people. You’ll have a good time.”
They were inviting the fox right into the chicken house? She smiled in a foxy way. It would be an experience. What a story this would make when she next saw her best friend Elsie! Elsie would say, “You did what? I don’t believe it.”
But Elsie knew Amy didn’t have enough imagination to make up this impulsive madness. Elsie would have to believe it. Or...would she ever tell Elsie? She’d have to wait and see how it all turned out.
They went up to the sixth floor where the wing’s whole series of suites were opened together, taken over by the Cougar Clan. Chas and Amy went from suite to suite and were welcomed with laughter and chatter. Amy kept saying, “I may not be any kin at all!” The truth can be said so that one is safely misunderstood and accepted. How strange that was.
“If you aren’t, we’ll adopt you,” Matt announced, and Connie gave Amy a rather cool look.
So Matt was a flirt? Connie was jealous? Would Connie finally move in with Matt just to keep him? Ah, What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive! How unknowingly we influence other lives. Would her bold intrusion cause Connie to do something rash? Would she do something she wouldn’t ordinarily have done?
The Cougars accepted Amy. That unquestioning acceptance made her a little uncomfortable. And Chas stayed close. He would say, “I’ll tell her about it and see to it she gets there.” And that easily, Chas established them as a pair.
Did women fall into men’s laps this readily? Did men simply decide who they wanted and then just wait for it to happen? It was amazing! No wonder men were womenizers. There was no sweat to it at all.
Chas, the catch of the entire clan, was hers! And it was he who’d paired them off. After this, she should be able to get him into bed in two days at least. By Saturday. Right on schedule.
The clan all had lunch together, still talking. The clouds broke, the sun came out, the sand absorbed the rain and dried on top.
The wedding dresses arrived, and some of the women went to try on the dresses. Tad was teased about whether or not he had the ring or had ordered the flowers. He was tolerant. For Amy, it was like really being a member of a large clan. It was nice.
