Linda Lael Miller Bundle Read online

  “Like a lot of show people, Rosamond was something of a vagabond. Shay lived here when she was a little girl, on and off. Later, she spent a lot of time in Swiss boarding schools. Went to college for a couple of years, somewhere in Oregon, and that’s when she met—” Todd paused and looked sheepish. “Damn, I’ve said too much and probably bored you to death in the process. I should be talking about the house. I can have the papers ready by tonight, and I’ll leave my keys with you.”

  He removed several labeled keys from a ring choked with similar ones and they clinked as they fell into Mitch’s palm. “Ivy mentioned dinner, didn’t she? You’ll be our guest, of course.”

  Mitch nodded. Todd thanked him, shook his hand again and left.

  When he was alone, Mitch went outside to explore the grounds, wondering at himself. He hadn’t intended to settle down. Certainly he hadn’t intended to buy a house. He had come to town to see Ivy and meet her future husband, to relax and maybe fish and sail a little, and he’d agreed to look at this house only because he’d been intrigued by his sister’s descriptions of it.

  Out back he discovered an old-fashioned gazebo, almost hidden in tangles of climbing rosebushes. Pungently fragrant pink and yellow blossoms nodded in the dull, late morning sunshine, serenaded by bees. The realization that he would have to hire a gardener as well as a housekeeper made Mitch shake his head.

  He rounded the gazebo and found another surprise, a little girl’s playhouse, painted white. The miniature structure was perfectly proportioned, with real cedar shingles on the roof and green shutters at the windows. Mitch Prescott, hunter of Nazi war criminals, infiltrator of half a dozen chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, trusted confidant of Colombian cocaine dealers, was enchanted.

  He stepped nearer the playhouse. The paint was peeling and the shingles were loose and there were, he could see through the lilliputian front window, repairs to be made on the inside as well. Still, he smiled to imagine how Kelly, his seven-year-old daughter, would love to play here, in this strangely magical place, spinning the dreams and fantasies that came so easily to children.

  Shay stormed out of Marvin’s office muttering, barely noticing Ivy, who sat at her computer terminal in the center of the reception room. “Bees…a half-ton of sugar…that could kill me….”

  “Todd sold the house!” Ivy blurted as Shay fumbled for the knob on her office door.

  She stopped cold, the storyboards for the outrageous commercials under one arm, and stared at Ivy, at once alarmed and hopeful. “Which house?” she asked in a voice just above a whisper.

  Ivy’s aquamarine eyes were shining and her elegant cheekbones were tinted pink. “Yours—I mean, your mother’s. Oh, Shay, isn’t it wonderful? You’ll be able to clear up all those bills and Todd will make the biggest commission ever!”

  Shay forgot her intention to lock herself up in her office and wallow in remorse for the rest of the afternoon. She set the storyboards aside and groped with a tremulous hand for a chair to draw up to Ivy’s desk. Of course she had been anxious to see that wonderful, magnificent burden of a house sold, but the reality filled her with a curious sense of sadness and loss. “Who bought it? Who could have come up with that kind of money?” she asked, speaking more to the cosmos than to Ivy.

  Her friend sat up very straight in her chair and beamed proudly. “My brother, Mitch.”

  Shay had a headache. She pulled in a steadying breath and tried to remember all that Ivy had told her, over the years, about her brother. He and Ivy did not share the same mother; in fact, Mitch and his stepmother avoided each other as much as possible. Shay had had the impression that Mitch Prescott was very successful, in some nebulous and unconventional way, and she remembered that he had once been married and had a child, a little girl if she remembered correctly. Probably because of the rift between himself and Ivy’s mother, he had rarely been to Skyler Beach.

  Ivy looked as though she would burst. “I knew Mitch would want that house, if I could just get him to look at it,” she confided happily. But then she peered at Shay, her eyes wide and a bit worried. “Shay, are you all right? You look awful!”

  Shay stood up and moved like a sleepwalker toward the privacy of her office.

  “Shay?” Ivy called after her. “I thought you’d be pleased. I thought—”

  Shay turned in the doorway, the storyboards leaving stains of colored chalk on her jeans and her pale blue blouse. She smiled shakily and ran the fingers of her left hand through her hair, hoping the lie didn’t show in her eyes.

  “I am happy,” she said. And then she went into the office, closed the door and hurled the storyboards across the room.

  “Dinner?”

  Ivy was clearly going to stand fast. “Don’t you dare say no, Shay Kendall. You wanted to be free of that house and Todd sold it for you and the least you can do is let us treat you to dinner to celebrate.”

  Shay gathered up the last of the invoices she had been checking and put them into the basket on her desk. It had been a difficult day, what with the planning of the commercials and that salesman making his speech on the front lot. Of course, it was a blessing that the house had been sold and she was relieved to be free of the financial burden it had represented, but parting with the place was something of an emotional shock all the same. She would have preferred to spend the evening at home, lounging about with a good book and maybe feeling a little sorry for herself. “Your brother will be there, I suppose.”

  “Of course,” Ivy replied with a shrug. “After all, he’s the buyer.”

  Shay felt a nip of envy. What would it be like to be able to buy a house like that? For a very long time, she had nursed a secret dream of starting her own catering business and being such a smashing success that she could afford to keep the place for herself and Hank. “I have to stop by Seaview to see Rosamond on my way home,” she said, hoping to avoid having dinner out. “And then, of course, there’s Hank….”

  “Shay.”

  She sighed and pushed back her desk chair to stand up. “All right, all right. I’ll spend a few minutes at Seaview and get a sitter for the evening.”

  Ivy’s lovely face was alight again. “Great!” she chimed, turning to leave Shay’s office.

  “Wait,” Shay said firmly, stopping her friend in the doorway.

  Ivy looked back over one shoulder, her pretty hair following the turn of her head in a rhythmic flow of fine gold. “What?”

  “Don’t get any ideas about fixing me up with your brother, Ivy, because I’m not interested. Is that clear?”

  Ivy rolled her eyes. “Oh, for pity’s sake!” she cried dramatically.

  “I mean it, Ivy.”

  “Meet us at the Wharf at eight,” Ivy said, and then she waltzed out, closing Shay’s door behind her.

  Shay locked her desk, picked up her purse and cast one last disdainful look at the storyboards propped along the back of her bookshelf before leaving. She tried to be happy about the assignment and the money it would bring in, tried to be glad that the elegant house high above the beach was no longer her responsibility, tried to look forward to a marvelous dinner at Skyler Beach’s finest restaurant. But, as she drove toward Seaview Convalescent Home, it was all Shay could do to keep from pulling over to the side of road, dropping her forehead to the steering wheel and crying.

  2

  Shay Kendall looked nothing like her illustrious mother, Mitch thought as he watched her enter the restaurant. No, she was far more beautiful: tall with lush brown hair that fell past her shoulders in gentle tumbles of curl, and her eyes were a blend of green and brown, flecked with gold.

  She wore a simple white cotton sundress and high-heeled sandals and when Ivy introduced her and she extended her hand to Mitch, something in her touch crackled up his arm and elbowed his heart. It was a sudden, painful jolt, a Sunday punch, and Mitch was off balance. To cover this, he made a subtle production of drawing back her chair and took his time rounding the table to sit down across from her.

  Ivy a
nd Todd, having greeted Shay, were now standing in front of the lobster tank, which ran the length of one wall, eagerly choosing their dinner. Their easy laughter drifted over the muted chatter of the other guests to the table beside the window.

  Shay was looking out through the glass; beyond it, spatters of fading daylight danced on an ocean tinted with the pinks and golds and deep lavenders of sunset. Her eyes followed the gulls as they swooped and dived over the water, giving their raucous cries, and a slight smile curved her lips. An overwhelming feeling of tenderness filled Mitch as he watched her.

  He had to say something, start a conversation. He sliced one irate glance in Ivy’s direction, feeling deserted, and then plunged in with, “Ivy tells me that the house I bought belonged to your mother.”

  The moderation with which Mitch spoke surprised him, considering that he could see the merest hint of rosy nipples through the whispery fabric of Shay’s dress. He took a steadying gulp of the white wine Todd had ordered earlier.

  The hazel eyes came reluctantly to his, flickered with pain and then inward laughter at some memory. Mitch imagined Shay as a little girl, playing in that miniature house behind the gazebo, and the picture slowed down his respiration rate.

  “Yes.” Her voice was soft and she tossed a wistful glance toward Ivy and Todd, who were still studying their unsuspecting prey at the lobster tanks. In that instant Shay was a woman again, however vulnerable, and Mitch was rocked by the quicksilver change in her.

  He tried to transform her back into the child. “That little house in back, was that yours?”

  Shay smiled and nodded. “I used to spend hours there. At the time, it was completely furnished, right down to china dishes—” She fell silent and her beautiful eyes strayed again to the water beyond the window. “I only lived there for a few years,” she finished quietly.

  Mitch began to wish that he had never seen Rosamond Dallas’s house, let alone bought it. He felt as though he had stolen something precious from this woman and he supposed that, in a way, he had. He was relieved when Ivy and Todd came back to the table, laughing between themselves and holding hands.

  He was so handsome.

  Nothing Ivy had ever said about Mitch Prescott had prepared Shay for the first jarring sight of him. He was a few inches taller than she was, with broad shoulders and hair of a toasted caramel shade, but it was his eyes that unsettled her the most. They were a deep brown, quick and brazen and tender, all at once. His hands looked strong, and they were dusted with butternut-gold hair, as was the generous expanse of chest revealed by his open-throated white shirt. He had just the suggestion of a beard and the effect was one of quiet, inexorable masculinity.

  Here was a man, Shay decided uneasily, who had no self-doubts at all. He was probably arrogant.

  She sat up a little straighter and tried to ignore him. His vitality stirred her in a most disturbing way. What would it be like to be caressed by those deft, confident hands?

  Shay’s arm trembled a little as she reached out for her wineglass. Fantasies sprang, scary and delicious, into her mind, and she battled them fiercely. God knew, she reminded herself, Eliott Kendall had taught her all she needed or wanted to know about men.

  Ivy was chattering as she sat down, her eyes bright with the love she bore Todd Simmons and the excitement of having her adored brother nearby. “Aren’t you going to pick out which lobster you want?” she demanded, looking from Shay to Mitch with good-natured impatience.

  “I make it a point,” Mitch said flatly, “never to eat anything I’ve seen groveling on the bottom of a fish tank. I’ll have steak.”

  Ivy’s lower lip jutted out prettily and she turned to Shay. “What about you? You’re having lobster, aren’t you?”

  Shay grabbed for her menu and hid behind it. Why hadn’t she followed her instincts and stayed home? She should have known she wouldn’t be able to handle this evening, not after the day she’d had. Not after losing—selling the house.

  “Shay?” Ivy prodded.

  “I’ll have lobster,” Shay conceded, mostly because she couldn’t make sense of the menu. She felt silly. Good Lord, she was twenty-nine years old, self-supporting, the mother of a six-year-old son, and here she was, cowering behind a hunk of plastic-covered paper.

  “Well, go choose one then!”

  Shay shook her head. “I’ll let the waiter do that,” she said lamely. I’m in no mood to sign a death warrant, she thought. Or the papers that will release that very special house to a stranger.

  She lowered the menu and her eyes locked with Mitch Prescott’s thoughtful gaze. She felt as though he’d bared her breasts or something, even though there was nothing objectionable in his regard. Beneath her dress her nipples tightened in response, and she felt a hot flush pool on her cheekbones.

  Mitch smiled then, almost imperceptibly, and his eyes—God, she had to be imagining it, she thought—transmitted a quietly confident acknowledgment, not to mention a promise.

  A wave of heat passed over Shay, so dizzying that she had to drop her eyes and grip the arms of her chair for a moment. Stop it, she said to herself. You don’t even know this man.

  A waiter appeared and, vaguely, Shay heard Todd ordering dinner.

  Ivy startled her back to full alertness by announcing, “Shay’s going to be a star. I’ll bet she’ll be so good that Marvin will want her to do all the commercials.”

  “Ivy!” Shay protested, embarrassed beyond bearing. Out of the corner of one eye she saw Mitch Prescott’s mouth twitch slightly.

  “What’s the big secret?” Ivy complained. “Everybody in western Washington is going to see you anyway. You’ll be famous.”

  “Or infamous,” Todd teased, but his eyes were gentle. “How is your mother, Shay?”

  Shay didn’t like to discuss Rosamond, but the subject was infinitely preferable to having Ivy leap into a full and mortifying description of the commercials Shay would begin filming the following week, after Marvin and Jeannie departed for faraway places. “She’s about the same,” she said miserably.

  The salads arrived and Shay pretended to be ravenous, since no one would expect her to talk with her mouth full of lettuce and house dressing. Mercifully, the conversation shifted to Todd’s dream of building a series of condominiums on a stretch of property south of Skyler Beach.

  Throughout dinner, Ivy chattered about her Christmas wedding, and when the plates had been removed, Todd brought out the papers that would transfer ownership of Rosamond’s last grand house to Mitch. Shay signed them with a burning lump in her throat and, when Ivy and Todd went off to the lounge to dance, she moved to make her escape.

  “Wait,” Mitch said with gruff tenderness, and though he didn’t touch Shay in any physical way, he restrained her with that one word.

  She sank back into her chair, near tears. “I know I haven’t been very good company. I’m sorry….”

  His hand came across the table and his fingers were warm and gentle on Shay’s wrist. A tingling tremor moved through her and she wanted to die because she knew Mitch had felt it and possibly guessed its meaning. “Let me take you home,” he said.

  For a moment Shay was tempted to accept, even though she was terrified at the thought of being alone with this particular man. “I have my car,” she managed to say, and inwardly she despaired because she knew she must seem colorless and tongue-tied to Mitch and a part of her wanted very much to impress him.

  He rose and pulled back her chair for her, escorted her as far as her elderly brown Toyota on the far side of the parking lot. There were deep grooves in his cheeks when he smiled at Shay’s nervous efforts to open the car door. When she was finally settled behind the steering wheel, Mitch lingered, bending slightly to look through the open window, and there was an expression of bafflement in his eyes. He probably wondered why there were three arthritic French fries, a fast-food carton and one worn-out sneaker resting on the opposite seat.

  “I’m sorry, Shay,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

/>   “About the house. About the hard time Ivy gave you.”

  Shay was surprised to find herself smiling. She started the car and shifted into reverse; there was hope, after all, of making a dignified exit. “No problem,” she said brightly. “I’m used to Ivy. Enjoy the house.”

  Mitch nodded and Shay backed up with a flourish, feeling oddly relieved and even a bit dashing. Oh, for an Isadora Duncan-style scarf to flow dramatically behind her as she swept away! She was her mother’s daughter after all.

  She waved at Mitch Prescott and started into the light evening traffic and the muffler fell off her car, clattering on the asphalt.

  Mitch was there instantly, doing his best not to grin. Shay went from wanting to impress him to wanting to slap him across the face. The roar of the engine was deafening; she backed into the parking lot and turned off the ignition.

  Without a word, Mitch opened the door and when Shay got out, he took her arm and escorted her toward a shiny foreign status symbol with a sliding sunroof and spoked wheels. The muffler wouldn’t dare fall off this car.

  “Where do you live?” Mitch asked reasonably.

  Shay muttered directions, unable to look at him. Damn. First he’d seen her old car virtually fall apart before his eyes and now he was going to see her rented house with its sagging stoop and peeling paint. The grass out front needed cutting and the mailbox leaned to one side and the picture windows, out of keeping with the pre-World War II design, gave the place a look of wide-eyed surprise.

  By the time Mitch’s sleek car came to a stop in front of Shay’s house, it was dark enough to cover major flaws. The screen door flew open and Hank burst into the glow of the porchlight, his teenage baby-sitter, Sally, behind him.

  “Mom!” he whooped, bounding down the front walk on bare feet. “Wow! That’s some awesome car!”

  Shay was smiling again; her son had a way of putting things into perspective. Sagging stoop be damned. She was rich because she had Hank.

  She turned to Mitch, opening her own door as she did so, and put down a foolish urge to invite him inside. “Good night, Mr. Prescott, and thank you.”