Love and War Page 11

  Jake nodded. “She’s like a kid sister to Britt. She’ll be good for the company, too. Straighten it out, okay?”

  Drew nodded. But as he watched his cousin pull out of the drive, he wasn’t sure he knew how to straighten things out. Things were out of hand on a half dozen fronts, it seemed to him.

  Where did he start?

  * * *

  SANDY WAS HALFWAY through her nightly ritual of fifty leg lifts and forty sit-ups when she heard the pounding on her front door. Not a knock, a definite pounding.

  Frowning, she lay on the floor staring up at the ceiling, contemplating the unwelcome interruption. She did another sit-up. The pounding intensified.

  Grunting out a barely audible “Keep your shirt on,” she pulled herself off the floor and headed for the door. Empty boxes were piled along one wall and the room now looked practically livable, to her eyes anyway, after only two days. At least she could now offer whoever threatened to demolish her front door a seat on the futon.

  Drew Stirling had his fist raised and aimed at the door when she opened it.

  Acutely conscious of the damp turquoise sweatband around her forehead and the faded workout clothes she had thrown on after shedding her charcoal suit, she was about to snap out a greeting that was anything but welcoming. Then he held up his copy of her report and said, “You’re right. Let’s talk.”

  Disarmed, unable now to use unpleasantness on him, Sandy still wasn’t willing to invite him into her apartment at nine-thirty in the evening, wearing her sweats and at a clear disadvantage. “Couldn’t this wait until tomorrow?”

  He suddenly looked and sounded tired. “I suppose. I just...I don’t think I can sleep. I wanted you to know and I couldn’t get a phone number for you and...”

  Sighing, Sandy swept the door open. “They hook me up tomorrow. Come on in. I’ve got a pot of decaf.”

  So she poured coffee into pottery mugs and they sat over the tiny dining table and discussed her plan for expanding both manufacturing and sales in Tyler. He had some good ideas, saw holes in her plan that she hadn’t anticipated and suggested solid solutions to them. The hands of the clock had edged toward midnight by the time they finished, and her respect for his business acumen had edged up, as well. This was almost as good, she thought, as a brainstorming session with Gin had been.

  “Thanks, Drew,” she said, standing as she retrieved their empty cups and headed for the sink. “We had a workable plan before. Now I think it’s a great one.”

  He smiled, still looking tired. “Thanks. Maybe we’ll make a good team, after all.”

  She leaned against the counter and he stood beside his chair. Sandy had known the apartment was small, but his closeness pointed up just how small. A good team? She wondered. It had been easy, these past two-and-a-half hours, to think of Drew only as a colleague. But now that their reports were closed and their pencils put away, the atmosphere in the room felt different.

  Increasingly uneasy, she moved toward the door. But as she brushed past him, he put a hand on her arm. She froze.

  “Sorry I’ve been so hard to live with.”

  She glanced up, knowing she should move away but finding her limbs unwilling to budge. If he had looked anything but unsure himself, she thought, it would have been easy. But there he was, his eyes full of questions and his lips forming such an uncertain half smile.

  “Things will get better,” she said, although she had no real reason to believe it was so.

  They hovered there, his fingers resting lightly on her arm, his breath close to her cheek. Move. See him to the door. It’s late and that’s why things feel so weird.

  But she didn’t move. She waited, heart thumping, watching his face waver in her direction. She saw his lips, which no longer smiled. Her gaze flickered to his eyes, which looked unfocused. An ache spread through her and she recognized it with a shock.

  He wanted to kiss, and so did she.

  She whispered, “Our grandparents wouldn’t approve of this.”

  He grinned, then lowered his lips to hers. They touched so briefly she later wondered whether they had touched at all. Then, abruptly, he backed away.

  He was no longer grinning and his eyes were suddenly so focused they looked almost startled. “I’d better go.”

  She stood alone, propped against her locked front door, a few minutes later. She told herself she should be grateful one of them had shown good sense. She only wished it had been her.

  She also wished it could have happened a minute or two earlier, so she wouldn’t now be wondering quite so achingly about the taste and texture of his lips.

  But she would still be wondering if it had happened this way for Gin.

  * * *

  DREW’S HEAD SPUN angrily all the way home. Dammit, why hadn’t he thought of this before?

  Our grandparents wouldn’t approve of this, she had said. That was when something had occurred to him. And no matter how strong the pull of her soft, full lips, he had known instantly that he had to get as far away from her as possible.

  If their grandparents had been engaged, why couldn’t they have been lovers, as well? And what would make a woman of any generation more bitter than being left behind in disgrace? Pregnant?

  Who’s to say that Sandy and I aren’t related?

  CHAPTER NINE

  “GRANDPA, IT’S JUST dinner.” Drew tried to make his own voice soothing in response to the recalcitrant voice on the phone. “I promise, it’s not going to turn into the Inquisition.”

  At least, not in the way Clarence expected, Drew thought.

  “Yet another indication that you do not know this town,” Clarence replied. “As soon as they spot me, the game of twenty questions will proceed. They will demand answers.”

  Drew wanted answers, too, but he wasn’t about to admit that to his grandfather. He would have to be shrewd to get anything out of Clarence that Clarence wasn’t ready to share. And he’d made it abundantly clear that he had nothing more to say on the subject of Magdalena Halston Murphy. Besides, there were other issues Drew needed to address with his grandfather. Sighing, he shoved his paperwork to the corner of his desk and leaned back in his chair. “Look, I talked to Mr. Kellaway today and he said you haven’t left your room since you arrived.”

  “As I suspected, the busybodies have begun their work already. Privacy is an alien concept in this burg.”

  “You won’t even go for your physical therapy. Don’t you want to get better?”

  There was a long silence, then Clarence answered, “I warned you not to bring me here.”

  “I’ll be there at six.”

  “Six? You’ve been in Tyler too long, son. Your mother raised you better than to dine at such an uncivilized hour.”

  Drew didn’t point out that his family had eaten late when he was a child only because his mother couldn’t finish her shift at the department store and get home on the bus any earlier than seven.

  “Dress warm, Grandpa.”

  Clarence continued his protests, but Drew hung up. He’d already heard the entire routine.

  He looked up to discover Sandy standing in his office doorway, looking efficient and all-business in a royal-blue suit. God, she was more than just intelligent and entertaining and challenging. She was gorgeous! Even in those baggy sweats the night before, face scrubbed clean and hair damp with perspiration, she had been gorgeous.

  Yeah, but is Clarence her grandfather, too?

  “Britt and Jake have a few minutes,” she said, “if you want to go over the plan with them.”

  “Oh. Well, why don’t you do it?” He was too rattled to sit in the conference room and act as if they were nothing more than colleagues. Not when he had come so close to kissing her senseless not twelve hours earlier. Not with things so up in the air. Not with those milky-pink pearls
resting lightly against her perfect neck. He cleared his throat and pulled his paperwork back to the center of his desk. “It’s your plan, really.”

  She frowned. “I think we should present it together. So they know we’re in agreement.”

  She was right, of course. Wasn’t she always? Why was he falling apart like this? Had Sandy’s grandmother affected his grandfather this way, too? Was there a twelve-step recovery group for men who suddenly found themselves powerless around clever, dark-haired women with soft-as-silk skin?

  She stepped into his office and closed the door. Drew’s pulse began to race. Being alone with her was not a good plan.

  “What happened last night, Drew?”

  He remembered the old admonition to never let ’em see you sweat. Not good for the business image. But this thing with Sandy had gone way beyond business. And way beyond his control. He felt nervous and he doubted he could hide it.

  “Nothing. I...nothing.”

  She never changed expressions and she didn’t move a muscle, but somehow Drew understood that she had no intention of leaving until she heard what she wanted to hear. “What was that kiss about?” she asked.

  His mouth went dry. If she intended to push, he had no choice but to push back. “Did I kiss you?”

  Her placid, lovely face gave no clue to what was going on behind it. But the silence stretched out so long it was clear something went on. At last she smiled without revealing a thing, merely deepening the mystery. “I guess we’ll never know, will we?”

  This was it; she had him by the scruff of the neck. She knew it; he knew it. Game, set and match; hand her the trophy. He resisted the urge to tug at his turtleneck, which seemed to be slowly choking him.

  “Come on,” he said, standing abruptly. “We’ll talk to Britt and Jake.”

  So she’d seen him sweat. Big deal. That was the least of his problems.

  * * *

  MATT HANSEN POKED a spoon into his goulash, but he was certain he couldn’t swallow another bite.

  He had to tell his mom he was flunking two courses. He would rather vacuum the floors every day for the rest of his life. As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t surprise him if that was the sentence.

  As if having the threat of terminal housework and parental disapproval hanging over his head weren’t bad enough, tonight’s dinner topic was how Yes! Yogurt could help with the unemployment problem in Tyler.

  Maybe he could volunteer now for the toilet-scrubbing chain gang.

  “Anyway,” Britt said as she walked around the table refilling bowls, “if Sandy and Drew are right, we’re talking about ten new jobs. That’s something.”

  “Surely the investigation will reach some kind of conclusion soon,” Jake said. “In the meantime, even a little bit of good news might raise spirits in town.”

  Matt’s own spirits sank lower. He could feel the shackles on his ankles.

  “Matt, you’ve hardly eaten a bite.” His mom stopped behind his chair. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. I’m fine, okay?”

  Britt’s arm came around and she pressed her wrist to his forehead. Matt cringed.

  “You don’t feel warm.”

  “I told you! Jeez. Can I be excused?”

  “But you haven’t eaten.”

  Then, in case the jury hadn’t heard enough, his fourteen-year-old sister added her testimony. “He acts weird at school, too,” Christy said.

  He glared at her. She made a face at him. Little Jacob pointed and laughed at her. For once, Matt didn’t think his baby brother was funny. Matt shoved a bite of goulash into his mouth and prayed everybody would stop staring at him.

  For a change, his prayers were answered. Jacob knocked over his glass of milk and the phone rang, creating instant pandemonium. Relieved to have the attention diverted, Matt took advantage of the chaos to ease from his chair and slip out the back door.

  He heard David calling his name as he opened the door. “Where’d Matt go? Matt! Telephone! It’s Jon Weiss!”

  Matt’s pulse skittered. Jon Weiss. The last person he wanted to talk to. He pulled the door silently shut and stood shivering in the dark, listening to the happy commotion behind him and knowing there was no way he deserved to be a part of it.

  * * *

  DREW WAS TIRED of the small talk. He twisted his coffee mug back and forth, dreading moving on to the topic he really wanted to discuss. He’d had about all the confrontation he wanted in recent weeks and he wasn’t looking forward to locking horns—again—with his grandfather.

  The waitress stopped to refill their cups, providing the reprieve of another handy, meaningless topic.

  “This establishment has not changed one iota in fifty years,” Clarence said, stirring a liberal portion of creamer into his fresh coffee. “The name, of course. It was the Knife and Fork Diner in those days. What did you say they call it now?”

  “Marge’s.”

  Clarence shook his head. “Lacks a certain originality, don’t you think? Marge’s Diner. The Knife and Fork, now that had character.”

  Despite complaining all the way about coming out in public in a wheelchair, Clarence had dressed to kill for the occasion. He wore his best tweed jacket with the plaid vest and worsted trousers that remained from an old suit. He wore a hat with the brim dipped low in front, the kind last seen when Humphrey Bogart was a leading man. His silk necktie was knotted crisply and his shirt was so heavily starched it must be rubbing his neck raw.

  “I thought we were dining out,” he had said when Drew arrived at Worthington House. He had eyed disapprovingly his grandson’s crewneck sweater and the khakis that no doubt didn’t crease well enough to suit him.

  “Few people dress for dinner at Marge’s, Grandpa.”

  That didn’t mean Clarence had to approve their slovenly manners, however.

  He had already asked the name and circumstance of every person over fifty he saw at Marge’s. A few he obviously recognized, most he didn’t.

  He had already demanded every detail of the fire at Ingalls F and M and expressed appropriate, if not altogether sincere, sympathy for those who remained out of work.

  “The scoundrel should be caught,” he had stated. “And justice served promptly.”

  “No one knows for sure it was arson, Grandpa. They’re still trying to make that determination.”

  “I heard it was a drifter. We never used to have that element in Tyler.”

  Drew saw nothing to gain from pointing out that the drifter in question was married to one of the town’s most popular ministers. Although some still stared and wondered and even talked when Michael Kenton came down the street, others had quietly accepted the fact that anyone upstanding enough to capture the heart of the Reverend Sarah wasn’t likely to be an arsonist.

  Clarence pointed his steak knife across the table. “Personally, I would look closer to home for the culprit.”

  “I hope you aren’t pointing that knife at me,” Drew said, trying to lighten the conversation.

  “Nonsense. One of the Ingallses. That’s where you’ll find the motive.”

  “Their business is shut down. Where’s the motive in that?”

  “Insurance, son. Insurance.”

  Drew didn’t care for that particular theory, either. He liked every single member of the Ingalls family, even gruff old Judson Ingalls. They might once have been the town’s moneyed elite, but today they were simply its doctors and lawyers, family people whose lives were comfortably intertwined with those of many other folks in the community.

  “I could have been there myself, you know,” Clarence said, capturing Drew’s attention with his strange claim.

  “Been where? What are you talking about?”

  “Bigger than Judson Ingalls.”

  Clarence was prone to gra
ndiose ideas, but this was news to Drew. And a very improbable suggestion. “What are you talking about?” he repeated.

  Sitting across the table from his grandfather, he saw a familiar, faraway look come into Clarence’s soft gray eyes—the same look he got on those rare occasions when he talked about the war. Drew knew a story was about to commence.

  “Ah, son, if it hadn’t been for the war, I don’t think the thing would have had nearly the same consequences.” Clarence absently stirred his coffee. “The war, that’s what made all the difference.”

  “Why was that, Grandpa?” Drew asked softly, knowing his prompting wouldn’t even be necessary in another moment or two, once the tale truly captured the old man’s attention.

  “Why, because there were pitifully few weddings during the war, of course. And what few there were were slapdash affairs. You know, grab the justice of the peace on the way to the train depot, that kind of thing.”

  Drew listened raptly as the story unfolded, of a wounded war hero returning to a small town hungry for good news, where a whole passel of young women were starved for the sight of a man—any man—who was older than fifteen and younger than forty. The fairest of the starved young women was the daughter of the business partner of the war hero’s father, so the match seemed a natural to everyone. The two families ran quite an empire in the small town, everything from the hardware store to the creamery to the first auto dealership in the county. The wedding was to be the event of the season.

  But once he had painted the scenario, Clarence grew silent. Drew waited, but the old man seemed content to brood.

  “So what happened, Grandpa?”

  “What happened? Why, the fickle young girl called the whole thing off, that’s what happened.”

  Impatient for the rest, Drew waved off the waitress who approached. “Are you sure?”

  Clarence’s eyes widened. “Am I sure? Was I not the wronged party? Was mine not the broken heart?”

  “Well...”

  “The woman in question was a chronic prevaricator. It appears time and age have not altered her basic nature.”

  “You still insist she’s lying?”