“But I thought you did it on a regular basis …”
“Well, of course,” Roxy said proudly. “And quite well, I might add. But when my guides want to be difficult, there’s certainly nothing I can do about it.”
“No, there isn’t,” Dawn said firmly. “And if we hold a seance when your guides aren’t feeling cooperative, we’re apt to hear a whole bunch of stuff most of the attendees don’t want to hear in public.”
“Really?” said Mary, beginning to look truly interested. “What kind of stuff?”
“Oh, secrets,” Dawn said vaguely. “There are times when they seem absolutely bound and deter-rnined to embarrass people.”
“Oh,” said Mary, her dark eyes gleaming. “A seance sounds like just the thing.”
Everyone looked at her in surprise.
“Well,” she said, “it would certainly be interesting!”
“Mary!” Ted said disapprovingly.
She grinned wickedly at him. “Just what kind of secrets do you suppose all these old farts could have? The real contents of their wills?”
“Mary…”
She shook her head, silencing him. “My dear, darling Teddy, you just never understood, did you? The only way to live is to live dangerously! Otherwise the boredom will kill you.”
He leaned toward her, and the look he gave her was dead serious. “If you really believed that, my dear, you wouldn’t have kept me dangling after you all these years.”
Mary cocked her head. “Is that how you see it? My dearest Teddy, if I had wanted safety, I would have married you—and how dull we both would have become!”
She turned to Roxy. “I have a group of friends I’d really like you to meet. Such a pity you don’t live here. I’d love to ask you to join our little club.”
Ted raised his eyes to heaven, a gesture that had the effect of gaining Roxy’s full attention.
“Would you like to hold a little seance for us?” Mary asked sweetly. “We’d be happy to pay your fee.”
Ted frowned at her, and that somehow seemed to make up Roxy’s mind. “I’d be delighted to,” she said.
Rainbow had the feeling that something truly unfortunate had just been set afoot, but she didn’t know how to stop it.
“Tomorrow night,” Mary said. “I’ll summon the group. Seven o’clock?”
“Yes,” Roxy agreed. “That’ll be fine.” The two women began to discuss the details.
Jake looked down at Rainbow. “Why don’t we go out to dinner tonight?”
Rainbow looked up at him, wondering what he could be thinking of. Hadn’t they just agreed that mere sexual attraction wasn’t enough? Although the sexual attraction she felt for him could hardly be described as mere. “Actually,” she said, “I was thinking about spending the evening trying to read the cards for myself.” She braced herself for a disbelieving look and was rather surprised when she didn’t get one.
“I’m a little confused myself,” he admitted. “I can understand why you want to do a reading. But perhaps afterward?”
Rainbow felt torn. On one hand, she very much wanted to go out with Jake. On the other, she had no doubt it would be the most reckless thing she could possibly do. But then she remembered what Mary had just said about living dangerously or dying of boredom. “Yes,” she said, ignoring the sudden arrival of a flock of butterflies in her stomach. “That would be nice.”
“Great!” He beamed at her.
“What’s great?” Roxy demanded, suddenly tuning into their conversation.
Rainbow lifted her chin. “I’m going out with Jake for dinner this evening.”
Roxy looked as if she were about to argue, but then jumped as Gene kicked her beneath the table.
“That’s great,” Gene said, beaming. “I’ll take your mother, Dawn, and Nellie out to dinner then myself. There’s this really neat place up the beach.”
Just then Harvey Little emerged from his hiding place behind the fern and scuttled across the lobby to the elevators.
“Well,” said Mary, when the elevator doors had closed after him, “what do you suppose he was up to?”
“He was just sitting there,” Nellie said.
Mary shook her head. “I don’t think so. There was something furtive about the way he looked.”
“Did you think so?” Gene said. But his gaze had grown thoughtful in a way that told Rainbow he wasn’t ignoring Mary’s suspicion.
“What does it matter?” Nellie asked. “We weren’t discussing anything of importance.”
“Dinner and a seance,” Gene said.
“You see?” said Roxy. “Nothing that should interest anyone except us!”
But Gene didn’t look so sure, and Rainbow found herself wondering uneasily what Gene thought Harvey Little might have to do with all this.
Joe smiled at Lucinda. “You see, my dear? It’s all beginning to come together. Jake and Rainbow are going out to dinner, and that revolting little man is beginning to get nervous. What do you think?”
“I think,” she said, “we ought to beat on Harvey’s wall again tonight.”
“Great idea, Luce,” Joe said with a grin. “Great idea.”
“But on the other side this time. I don’t want to keep Trixie awake again.”
“Oh, why not?” Joe asked. “She’ll only call the police.”
A slow smile spread across Lucy’s face. She was really beginning to get into this little scheme of theirs. “Oh, I do like the sound of that. By all means, let’s keep Trixie awake.”
Satisfied, they resumed their watch over their old friends.
Fourteen
MUCH to everyone’s dismay, the engineers refused to say anything about the state of the building. They had taken their measurements, they said, and inspected the property. Now they needed to go back to the office, evaluate their data, and prepare a report. That might take a week or more.
At least, that’s what the nerd said. Slide Rule, however, leaned over to Jake as they were leaving. “The building’s okay, man,” he said quietly. “You better check out the ghost idea.”
Jake watched them leave with a glum feeling of inevitability. So much for that hypothesis. Rainbow, on the other hand, apparently wasn’t the least dismayed by this news. Of course not; she had expected it.
At least she didn’t gloat. She didn’t even send him a significant look. He could have forgiven her for saying “I told you so,” but she had more dignity than that. She simply suggested they meet at seven, and he, having nothing else to say, agreed.
He watched Rainbow leave with her family and decided to spend the rest of the afternoon working on his book. Anything was better than brooding about events—and about Rainbow.
All the way home, Gene kept Roxy busy talking about everything under the sun except Jake, for which Rainbow was grateful. She knew her mother well enough to guess that Roxy wanted to say a whole lot about her disappearance upstairs with Jake. Roxy always had an opinion on everything, and what’s more, felt that as a mother she was entitled to it.
Right now, Rainbow didn’t want to hear it. Yes, she was being a jerk and taking a big risk, but she didn’t need a lecture. Certainly not from her mother, who was capable of turning a molehill into a mountain in a matter of seconds.
No sooner did they get home than a woman knocked on the door seeking a reading. Rainbow gladly invited her in. After that, she had two scheduled appointments, and by then there was just enough time to do a reading for herself and get ready for dinner with Jake.
But as was usual of late, the cards told her nothing useful. It was as if her psychic powers had developed a big blind spot, and the feeling made her uncomfortable. At the very least, she expected to get some sense of the direction events were taking, but the cards mocked her with their silence, or with her inability to interpret them usefully. Either way, it was disconcerting.
Giving up at last, and accepting the fact that she was going to have to face her immediate future in the same ignorance as most people in the world, she w
ent to dress.
Of course, Roxy felt she shouldn’t dress up. Paradise Beach was a relaxed community where the comfort of tourists generally dictated the dress codes. But Rainbow felt differently. Going out to dinner was a special event and deserved something more than shorts and a T-shirt.
She selected an emerald green cotton dress with a fitted bodice and flared skirt, and white sandals. She passed on pantyhose, though. In this climate, at this time of year, wearing them would have been lunacy.
By the time she emerged from her bedroom, Gene had already hustled the rest of the family away, so -re didn’t have to bear her mother’s comments about how she had chosen to dress. She realized that Roxy was just being protective, but she also figured that at thirty-something, she was entitled to make her own stupid mistakes without her mother’s intervention.
And this was a stupid mistake, she thought, as she waited for Jake. Nothing good could come from it, and she began to wonder if she wasn’t just acting like a stubborn horse and taking the bit between her teeth when common sense dictated she ought to head the other way.
It wasn’t just stubbornness that was goading her, she realized. There was also an element of wistful hope. Stupid, irrepressible hope. Jake had proved to be tolerant of her psychic abilities, far more tolerant than she’d have expected after their first encounter. And that tolerance was leading her down the proverbial primrose path, drawing her along with the merest whiff of hope.
Because she liked Jake Carpenter very much. And while she still rankled at his initial assessment of her, she also respected him for it. He certainly didn’t stand to lose a thing if she proved to be a fraud, so he had been protecting the other residents of the building, people who at that time were strangers to him. How could she not respect that?
She also respected his willingness to be tolerant— although she had to admit that she wanted more than tolerance from a man—and would have to have it in order to develop a serious relationship.
These very lucid thoughts were almost enough to make her run to her bedroom, strip off her dress, change into shorts, call Jake, and tell him to forget it.
But it was too late. Even as she started to turn and run from the danger, it pulled up in front of her house. Her heart hammered like a trapped animal’s as she watched Jake climb out of his car and walk up to her door.
When the bell rang, for an instant she couldn’t move. If she didn’t answer it, he’d go away eventually—and probably never speak to her again.
And it was that last thought that galvanized her, causing her to open the door and smile at him. She couldn’t bear the thought of him never speaking to her again.
“Hi,” he said. His gaze traveled over her with blatant appreciation. “Wow!”
He had changed, too, she noted, and was now wearing an open-throated blue shirt and blue slacks that somehow made him look taller, and that emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the narrowness of his hips. Every cell in her body suddenly remembered their earlier embrace, as if she were imprinted forever with the memory of his contours.
“You look good enough to eat,” he said appreciatively, and then reddened to the roots of his hair. “I shouldn’t have said it that way,” he said swiftly, but her sudden laughter drowned his words.
“It’s okay,” she said, taking his arm. And it was. To hell with everything, she thought, feeling wild with exhilaration. If all she could have was tonight, she was going to have it all.
He took her to one of the nicer seafood restaurants a long way up the beach, past the condos and hotels.
They had to wait for the drawbridge at John’s Pass while a day-cruise boat passed beneath them, along with an assortment of smaller boats coming back to harbor for the night.
The restaurant he had chosen was on the Intra-coastal Waterway, with a view of homebound sailboats from the windows of the back dining room.
“I figured this was far enough away that we’re not likely to run into anyone from the Towers,” he told her with a smile.
She smiled back, but wondered if he thought he .vas protecting them somehow, or if he just didn’t want to be seen with her. The last suspicion was unworthy, she realized immediately. He hadn’t seemed to care who might hear when he’d asked her out.
So he wanted to be alone with her. The understanding gave her a delicious feeling, and suddenly the evening was alive and alight with beauty.
They dined on shrimp and crab as daylight gave way to twilight and then night. Unlike so many places on the beach, this restaurant didn’t hurry its customers along, but gave them plenty of time to enjoy fine dining—and one another’s company. By the time they reached dessert, they felt they had learned a lot about one another.
That was when Rainbow really noticed the man at the table behind Jake. He was dining alone, and the first few times their eyes locked, she had thought it was accidental. By the time she was drinking her liqueur, she knew he was staring at her.
He was an older man with steel-gray hair, dressed in slacks and a white shirt. Ordinary looking, she thought, except for blue eyes as exceptional as Jake’s. She gave him a smile and a nod, and saw him smile and nod in return. Then she gave her attention to her reflection in the window glass, hoping the man would have the courtesy to direct his attention elsewhere.
When she looked again, the man was gone.
When they were driving home, Jake said, “I’d like to spend a little more time with you. I’d suggest your place, but… well…”
She laughed, feeling a little giddy. “I have an excess of relatives there.”
“There is that,” he agreed, flashing her a smile. “And my place has furniture on the ceiling.”
Oh, Rainbow, she thought, as soon as she spoke. This is so dangerous! Time alone with Jake would probably bring a repeat of what had happened that afternoon. Why else did he want to be alone with her?
And she must never forget that men viewed sexual matters differently. What would for him be a mere interlude might for her be a major catastrophe.
But she wanted him. Desperately. Deep down inside her was a burning desire that had been heightened in his arms that afternoon. She no longer merely felt an attraction, she felt a compelling need to be with him. She assured herself she was old enough to handle this, old enough to have a one-night stand without being crushed by it, but deep inside she feared that wasn’t true.
Her body, however, wasn’t listening, and right now her brain was so awash in anticipation of his touch that she wasn’t thinking any too clearly. Tomorrow seemed a long way away, and tonight seemed to be all that mattered.
Amazingly enough, they managed to make it across the parking lot, through the lobby, and into the elevator without running into anyone. Rainbow felt a little like she had back in her college days when she’d sneaked her boyfriend into the dorm after curfew. The wild exhilaration in her was growing, consuming her with its addictive excitement.
When the elevator reached Jake’s floor, he poked his head out to make sure the coast was clear, then they darted across the hallway and into his unit. Once the door was closed behind them, Rainbow started to laugh, and Jake joined her.
He leaned against the door and gave her a cock-eyed grin. “I feel like I’m living with thirty pairs of parents.”
That sent Rainbow into fresh laughter. “Really?” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.
“Really. Nearly every morning, someone knocks on my door to ask if I’ve had breakfast. Three times in the past week, women have brought me plates of cookies or brownies. Four times they’ve brought me casseroles because bachelors can’t be bothered to cook.”
“Did they say that?”
He nodded. “In so many words. I’ve been asked if I need help doing my laundry, one lady offered to sew a button back on for me when it popped off my shirt the other day, and I’ve received all kinds of advice on how to wax the kitchen floor and what works best for cleaning windows.”
“Wow!”
His grin broadened. “Actually, it’s kind of touching. But I sure as hell don’t want their advice on my love life.”
Rainbow’s smile became crooked. “No, I think we can mess that up well enough on our own.”
His smile faded. “I’m sorry, Rainbow. You’re right. This is foolhardy, and I’m old enough to know better.”
“So am I.”
That having been said and agreed to, they stood looking at one another in obvious yearning until finally Jake groaned and reached for Rainbow. A little murmur escaped her as her eyes closed and she leaned into his embrace.
Not again, Jake promised himself. He was not going to let this get out of hand again. He was going to control himself, take it slowly, let it build gently…
But the feel of her gentle curves pressed against him were the most powerful aphrodisiac he’d ever known. Just a kiss, he promised himself. Just one kiss…
Her face was pressed to his shirt front, and her arms wound their way around his waist. She clung to him as if she never wanted to let go. Then, almost as if she were reading his mind, she tilted her face upward. Her eyes remained closed, but her soft, slightly parted lips seemed to beg for his kiss.
He couldn’t have said no if his life depended on it. Slowly, reminding himself to be gentle, to take his time, to restrain his wild need for her, he brushed the lightest of butterfly kisses on her lips.
Another murmur escaped her, and her hold on him tightened, demanding more. A surge of wonder and triumph filled him as he realized his feelings were returned in full measure.
But he had made a promise, and it bound him as tightly as any chain. He kissed her again, allowing his tongue one longing foray into the warm, welcoming depths of her mouth, allowing his body one long, lingering taste of her pressed to him, then he gently broke away.
It wasn’t easy. Every cell in his body was screaming for her now, but he had promised. He almost cried out from the pain of it when he let her go.
They stood there looking at one another for a minute, then Jake pushed himself away from the door and headed for the kitchen. “Would you like something to drink? I’ve got coffee, tea, juice, and milk, nothing alcoholic, I’m afraid. I have no evil designs on you.”