Swept Away

He turned and smiled at her. “At least you’ve come. I’d like us to get acquainted. Would you…would you…spend the night?”

She wasn’t prepared for a love-in, not after years of resenting this man who had rejected her, only to welcome another man’s child into his home and his heart.

“Thanks, but I’m staying at that little white, two-story hotel on Front Street. It doesn’t seem to have a name,” she told him, “and I’m leaving tomorrow morning.”

Richard made a pyramid of his long fingers, propped up his chin and scrutinized her. She had the feeling that he judged her and found her wanting. But what could he expect from the daughter he’d left thirty years earlier?

He gazed steadily into her eyes. “If Esther told you to find me, what did she want me—or you, for that matter—to know?”

She’d wondered about that but couldn’t guess a convincing answer. “I…I don’t know. She didn’t get a chance to tell me.”

He knocked his right fist into his left palm as she’d seen Schyler do while he tried to sway the judge against her. “I see. In that case, we’ll have to spend enough time together to figure out what was left unsaid. So stay for dinner.”

A command if she’d ever heard one, and her good sense told her to obey it. She glanced at Schyler, who’d said nothing during her exchanges with his father. His guarded expression told her that she’d displeased him and that she was on her own.

“My housekeeper is usually here on Saturdays,” Richard explained, “but she’s at a church outing today. The food will be edible, though, because I cook about as well as anybody, and I’ve taught Schyler to do the same.”

He shifted his glance to Schyler. “Son, why don’t you show Veronica our little village while I get the meal together? We eat at six-thirty, Veronica.”

“Well I—”

Schyler had her by the arm. She didn’t think she’d find his fingerprints on her flesh, but he had certainly touched her with gentler fingers in the past.

“Finish your writing, Dad. There’s plenty of time before dinner. I’ll entertain her.”

He ushered her into the living room and pointed to a brown leather recliner. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Dark colors didn’t do a thing for her, and her green suit would die against brown. Feeling wayward and, in a way, trapped, she ignored his suggestion and sat on the huge cream-colored sofa.

“Thanks, but I’ll sit over here.”

He stood several feet away looking at her. And saying nothing. She resisted crossing her knee, or swinging her foot, or pulling her hair. And she was damned if she’d rub her nose. When she could no longer stand this scrutiny, she blurted out, “Are you being rude deliberately?”

His shrug was slow, nonchalant. “If I were, you’d probably know it, considering what an expert you are at it.”

She knew she deserved the reprimand, for she’d hurt Richard Henderson when she didn’t return his warm greeting. But she couldn’t explain it to Schyler, couldn’t expose herself by telling him what her youth had been compared to his.

Instead, she defended herself. “I’m honest, Mr. Henderson, and I’m not good at pretense. I was as gracious as I could be.”

He dug the toe of his house shoe into the broadloom carpet. “Yes. I suppose you were. But that’s not saying much. Did you plan to hurt him? Did you come here to get revenge for something he doesn’t seem to remember?”

She could feel her shoulders sag with a heavy weight that seemed to shroud her body. Weary in spirit. She knew it wasn’t the kind of fatigue that a tub of hot water could soak away. It seeped into her marrow and nearly brought tears to her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she replied, trying honestly to understand her motive. “I don’t believe I planned anything. This is a trial for you and for him, but what do you think this visit is doing to me? I looked at him, and for the first time, I saw myself. My eyes, hair, coloring, face and height. It’s as though I didn’t know myself until now. Don’t you think this is a shock for me? That it hurts? No. You’re too busy judging me. Both of you.”

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his trousers, sat down with his legs spread wide apart and gazed steadily at her. After what she figured was a full minute, he rested his left ankle on his right knee and leaned back in the chair.

“And how do you think I feel, Veronica? You’ve taken up permanent residence in my head. A woman who turned me around. A woman who detests my dad and with whom I’ve had a rough legal battle. A woman who probably blames me for having done my job as honestly and competently as I knew how. But the worst of it is the fire between us, a fire so hot not even our attitudes toward each other can put it out.”

She jerked forward, ready to deny it, even as the woman in her yearned to touch him and to feel his hands hot on her flesh.

He waved a disparaging hand. “I don’t need your agreement on this. I’m thirty-six years old, and I know when a woman is attracted to me. We both felt that…” He threw up his hands as if in surrender. “Chemistry or whatever the minute we met.”

She opened her mouth to disown it and to accuse him of arrogance, but dancing lights suddenly twinkled in his eyes and a smile played loosely around his mouth, knocking her off balance. Her heart shimmied, frenzied, like a demon possessed, and in spite of herself, her hand clutched at her chest.

“Don’t worry,” he soothed, “the way things are going, I expect fate intends to keep a lot of distance between us. A pity, though. We could have danced one hell of a dance.”

She leaned forward, disappointment chilling her to the bone, yet fascinated with his cool acceptance that he wanted what he wasn’t likely to get or even to pursue. “How can you say that when we’ve never even tried to be friends?”

He flexed his shoulders in a quick shrug and strummed his fingers on the wide arm of the recliner. “Certain people can’t begin with a friendship.” Shivers coursed through her as desire blazed briefly in his gray-eyed gaze.

He shrugged again, seeming to downplay the importance of what he said and of what he’d felt. “With us…too many obstacles. Too many and too big when we met and even stronger ones now.”

“Right. The main one being all that energy you expended trying to get me convicted of a crime I didn’t commit.”

He flinched, and a stricken expression flashed over his face. Then he laid back his shoulders and looked her in the eye. She had to hand it to him; the man ruled his emotions.

“Do you want to reopen that matter? The judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence, vindicating you. Let’s bury it, shall we?”

She couldn’t believe he’d said it. “Don’t you realize you torpedoed my career? Let’s bury it, you say.” She snapped her finger. “Simple as that.”

He leaned forward, his eyes beseeching her. “I’m not callous, Veronica. I just can’t see the use of continuing the argument. If I’ve caused you any damage, you know I’m sorry, and I’ll do anything I can to repair it.”

She gave him the benefit of her sweetest smile. “A guy thing, huh? If you don’t see a reason, there isn’t one.”

His gray eyes widened in surprise. “Good grief, is that the way I come across to you?”

Don’t let him snow you, girl, she told herself, when crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. “Just cut it right out.” She slammed her hand across her mouth when she realized she’d spoken those words aloud.

Caught out, she jumped to her feet. “I’ll…I think I’ll see what’s going on in the kitchen.” She didn’t know why she’d said that; she didn’t want to be alone with her father because she didn’t know what to say to him.

Schyler saved her. “Uh-uh. Dad hates to have anybody in that kitchen with him when he’s cooking.”

She sat down. Trapped. She had to get out of there. Away from him and his mesmeric eyes and seductive smile. “In that case, I think I’ll go for a walk. You must have something you’d rather be doing.”

His teasing grin and the sparkles in his eyes couldn’t be taken for anything but frank deviltry. “Not another single thing,” he said and placed his right hand over his heart. “Just keeping you company, and it’s my pleasure.”

No sooner had he said it than Richard appeared in the door of the living room. “There you two are. I know you wanted to finish that descrambler, Son. So I appreciate your taking the time to get to know Veronica, because that’s important to me.”

As Richard looked from one to the other, Schyler put up his hands, palms out, in surrender. “Okay, so I lied. Truce?”

“I won’t ask what that was about,” Richard said and left them alone.

She didn’t realize her demeanor had changed until Schyler frowned. “How can you dislike him so much when you don’t even know him?” he asked her. “Is he kind, warm, gracious, honest and decent? Is he? Does he pay his debts, and does he help people who can’t do for themselves? Does he? You can’t answer, and that means you can’t judge him.”

She wanted to erase the pain reflected in his eyes, to hold him and…For a quick moment, her gaze went toward the ceiling. A father she’d been taught to despise inextricably tied to a man whose smile made her head swim and whose every gesture made her long for the feel of his arms hard around her. A man who made her dream dreams that kept her blushing for days. If she was being punished, she’d like to know what she’d done to deserve it. She wished her ambiguous feelings toward him would sort themselves out, that she could either despise Schyler Henderson and dismiss him from her life or let herself feel what her heart and body longed to experience. And while her conflicting feelings battled with each other, she searched for a gentle reply. Truthful, yet without the verbal tentacles that could pierce the heart.

“It’s best not to pry, Schyler—if I may call you that. There’s a well of hurt and misery that you apparently know nothing about. I don’t know anything about it, either, only what I’ve been told, what I had drilled into me ever since I’ve known myself. You said you’re not callous. Neither am I. Don’t dig deep. It’s enough that one of us carries the burden.”

He reached across the three feet of space that separated them and grasped her hand. “Don’t make that mistake, Veronica. All three of us feel the pain. Tell me why you’ve taken a three-month leave from CPAA and why you’ve hinted you might not return to your job.”

She shared with him her reasons for downplaying the importance of a job that had consumed all of her energies, thought and passion for the previous five years. Her proving ground. The place where she’d taught herself that she could do whatever she set herself to do and do it well. Her chest went out and her shoulders back.

“I had to get away from there, to find myself. I’d done a lot of things, covered a lot of miles and garnered my share of laurels, but…” she faced him fully, wanting him to understand what she’d never told anyone “…but I’d never lived. Never wrestled with a relationship slipping through my fingers, never argued and gossiped with girlfriends, never opened my arms wide and let the breeze blow me wherever it would.”

“Back up a minute,” he said, and she had the impression that he was putting events into their proper perspective. “That case wasn’t the only reason why you decided your office can get along without you for three months?? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Some of my reasoning was bound up with that, the fact that after so much acclaim, the community that I had served so selflessly could forget so quickly.”

“What do you mean, people forgot?”

She waved a hand in disdain. “Not one reporter asked me for an interview when that case was closed in my favor.”

His sharp whistle sliced through the room. “I never dreamed.”

“It’s okay now. I learned a lot from that.”

“So you went to Europe. Then what?” he asked.

“I think I’ve done more living in the weeks since I left CPAA than in the previous thirty-two years and five months of my life.”

He leaned toward her, an animated expression on his face, and squeezed her fingers. “You did something you always wanted to do?”

The mere memory of those few exhilarating days eased the harsh feelings that had beset her since she’d stepped across Richard Henderson’s threshold.

She nodded eagerly. “Yes. Oh, yes. I skied the slopes of the Jungfraujoch, hiked alone through the mountain terrain, spent the night with hospitable strangers and got a proposal of marriage from their six-foot-four-inch tall, blond and handsome elder son. Every single second of it exhilarated me. Free. Almost a part of nature. I’ll never forget it.”

Schyler felt her fingers soft and warm in his hand. He’d held them for all of five minutes, and she’d let him. He focused on her words. “A proposal? You sure you’re telling all of this?”

When had he last seen a woman wrinkle her nose in pure wickedness? He braced himself. Maybe she wasn’t as straitlaced as he’d thought.

“All except…uh…his…er request after I turned him down.”

“Wait a minute! Don’t tell me…you—”

She interrupted him, snatching her hand from his as she did so. “You think I’m crazy? The man was a gentleman. He asked. I said no to that, too, and he didn’t press me.”

Schyler let himself breathe. “I would have been surprised if your answer had been different.” He rubbed his chin, reflecting on some of his own temptations. “But when we’re under stress—and you certainly were—we sometime behave out of character.”

A softness seemed to envelop her. He wouldn’t have associated shyness with her, but he sensed it in her changed demeanor and saw it in her lowered gaze. Long lashes, half an inch of them, hid her large, almond-shaped black eyes—so much like his father’s—from him.

“Your eyes must be the most beautiful I’ve ever looked at. It’s a wonder they don’t get you into trouble. Every time you blink, it’s as if you’re flirting.”

She managed to look at something beyond his back. “I’ve been told that.”

Right then he made up his mind to get to know Veronica Overton. He’d seen her regal in her professional armor and arrogant with his father, but the woman before him at that moment was sweet and feminine. If he dug deeper…He stood and it seemed natural to reach for her hand. He did, and she grasped it.

“Come help me set the table for dinner. I can tell from the rattling in the kitchen that he’ll have it ready in five or six minutes.”

Being with her gave him a good feeling, he realized, but he didn’t fool himself. No woman would ever be important to him unless she showed genuine affection for his father. He eyed her as they set the table, and he liked the way she went about it. Unhurried. Self-assured. She might well have been in her own home. At the thought, his belly tightened, and whispers of air skittered through the hairs on his forearms and the backs of his hands, teasing his nerves. Warning him. No you don’t, man, he told himself. Don’t go there! Don’t you even think it. But an image of her in his home, belonging there, and filling it with warmth flitted through his mind.

He shook his head symbolically, getting his mind straight. “You could grow on a guy.”

She whirled around, her face wreathed in the warmest smile he’d ever seen on her. “Think so?”

“Yeah. You think you could handle it?”

Now she was flirting with him. He walked over to the china cabinet where she stood twirling a linen napkin. She grinned at him. “No doubt about it. I can catch anything you can pitch.”

He looked at her hands propped against her hips and couldn’t help laughing. “Anytime you want a demonstration, be glad to oblige you. I like a woman with guts, and you’ve got plenty.”

“Hmmm. You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

So she liked to challenge! Fine with him; he enjoyed a good jostle, and he saw in her a worthy opponent. “I’d better be. A tongue-tied lawyer and an insecure engineer might as well not leave home.”

She worried her bottom lip. “Engineer?”

“Yeah. That’s the other hat I wear.”

He yielded to the temptation to pull the strands of hair dangling in front of her left ear lobe, tugging on them much as he would have on the rope of a bell. “I’m confident. Yes,” he said recalling her comment. “You’re not lacking self-confidence yourself.” He watched her tuck the errant strands behind her ear and marveled at her ability to look over his shoulder at some object past him, but not into his eyes.

“A little boy in my second-grade class used to do that, pull my hair, I mean.” She still didn’t look at him.

He stepped closer to her. “If you don’t look at me, I’ll disappear. Is that what you think? You have to deal with me, Veronica, and I’m here to tell you it won’t be child’s play, either. Believe me!”

She looked at him, her long lashes sweeping up from her cheeks, and her expression was one of mild defiance. Figuring her out could be a full-time job. “I’m equal to the task, Schyler, so let’s not waste time outdoing each other.”

He had to force the smile, because he liked her too much. Or he would, if it wasn’t for her attitude toward his father. Wanting her had never bothered him too much; he could deal with that. But to like a woman who heated your loins every time you looked at her…He let out a harsh breath. Straighten out your head, man.

She might like the truth, and she might not, but anything short of straight talk could take him where he didn’t want to go.

“Look, Veronica,” he said, pronouncing her name slowly to emphasize the importance of his words. “I’ve watched a lot of animals square off, but except for a mother guarding her young, they were never male and female. So don’t count on a big fight between us to cool things off. It isn’t going to happen.”

Her hand went to that unruly hair hanging over her ear, and when she spun it around her index finger, he knew she was stalling for time. Thinking. She had plenty of patience with herself. Good. He liked that, so he waited.

“You know, Schyler,” she said at last, “you’ve been talking out of both sides of your mouth. The right side says maybe, and the other yells, ‘Don’t even think it.’ Doesn’t matter, though, since I probably won’t be around when you get it straightened out.”

Her mocking tone set off the sparks that tripped his ego, but he reeled it in. He made it a point to control his reactions to such deliberate provocations as the one she’d just thrown at him. He was his own man, and if he accepted every gauntlet, he’d get bandied around like a hockey puck.

He smiled as best he could, though he knew it barely touched his lips. “I see you like to fence,” he said, glad for the presence of mind not to say what he was thinking. “Remember that a clever swordsman knows his opponent’s strengths and weaknesses before he agrees to duel.”

“Well, I’m glad to see the two of you getting along,” Richard said as he placed a platter of food on the dining room table, ending their game of taking each other’s measure.

Schyler didn’t want his father to think they’d come to terms, because they hadn’t and probably never would. Only mutual passion united them, and they both had the strength to ignore that.

“We were setting the table, Dad.”

Richard nodded slowly, as one trying to accept the inevitable. “I’ll get the rice and salad. What do you want to drink, Veronica?”

Schyler couldn’t help relaxing when she replied, “Water or white wine with club soda in it,” because his father didn’t hold “drinkerds,” as he called them, in high regard.

Richard returned with the remainder of the meal and lit the huge, five-inch-thick candle that graced the center of the table. He sat between his daughter and his son and held out a hand to each of them. Schyler wondered if the hand Veronica held gave her the same sense of security and well-being that his father’s hand had always given him.

Richard bowed his head. “Heavenly Father, we thank you for this food, and on this special occasion, we thank you for each other. I had decided, Lord, that you weren’t listening to me all these years, but it seems that you were. It’s not exactly as I had hoped and prayed it would be, but she’s here with me. You’ve given us a second chance, an opportunity to erase the hurt and the pain of these thirty years. But with your help and me trying all I know how, I know I can’t miss. I’m accepting this second chance for which I do thank you. Amen.”

Schyler glanced first at his father, who was reaching for the dish of rice, and then at Veronica, who’d glued her gaze to their father. If they could get through the meal in peace, he’d be grateful.

“Have some rice,” Richard said to Veronica, as though he ate with her every day. “You can’t eat shish kebab without rice.”

Schyler thought his heart had stopped beating. Would she accept the dish his father held out to her?

“Nobody has to beg me to eat rice,” she said and held out her plate for him to serve her. “Saffron rice, at that. What kind of meat is it?”

He had to control his heavy release of breath or they would both know he’d feared her response.

Richard served her a large helping and laid two skewers of shish kebabs on it with pleasure so obvious that Schyler ached for him.

“It’s lean, tender pork, slices of sage sausage, mushrooms, onions and green peppers. And I marinated the meat in my special sauce all day.” He watched as she sampled it.

“Hmmm. This is fabulous.” A smile of pure contentment covered her face as she glanced up at her father. “I’m telling you, this is great.”

Schyler said a silent prayer of thanks, and he could see the hope written on his father’s face. He wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t move too fast or hope for too much. But how could he prick that fragile balloon of optimism? Veronica’s behavior was probably nothing more than good manners. The test was yet to come.

Veronica listened to the man she’d learned by age four to dislike say a prayer of thanks that he had been reunited with her, and she heard him express his hope and faith for a future in which she was a part. Her heart constricted at the sound of his words, and she’d never been more torn in her life. But when he passed her the rice, gazing into her eyes with a look that was part challenge and part prayer, he touched her deeply in an indefinable but life-giving spot. From the corner of her eye, she read on Schyler’s face a dread, even a fear that she would refuse the food her father held out to her. I’ve got decent manners, I’m hungry and I love rice, she told herself, handing him her plate.

And she was glad she did. She saw Schyler take a deep breath, close his eyes and let the air pour out of him. And for a second, Richard raised his eyes skyward before looking at her with a smile of delight on his face.

“You’re one terrific cook,” she told him and meant it.

“I like to cook,” he said, savoring morsels of meat and mushrooms. “That’s when I do my best thinking.” He glanced at his watch. “Schyler, it’s still light for another hour or so. Could you give her a tour of our little village? I’ll have the kitchen cleaned by the time you get back, and we can have dessert.”

Veronica looked at Schyler. “You don’t clean up when he cooks?” She shook her head. “Shame. Shame.”

Schyler’s eyebrows shot up with such speed that she knew she’d suggested the unthinkable. “Me? Clean up after he cooks? You’re joking. He cleans up his own mess, and when I cook, I do the same. Ready to go? The bay is spectacular about now.”

She settled into the passenger seat of Schyler’s cream-colored Buick Le Sabre, big and comfortable like the man who’s driving it, she found herself thinking. He backed out of the garage and headed for Front Street, and all she could see as he drove through the little village were white buildings.

“Is there an ordinance in this town that requires all the buildings to be white?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. This place is the bedrock of tradition, so it’s probably just copycatting. I think I’ll check that.”

“I can’t imagine growing up here, though I suspect it was more fun than where I lived, considering you’ve got the Chesapeake Bay at your doorstep.”