“Well?” Sara asked.
“I think this is what you women call ‘a good cry,’” he said, then mumbled, “But not good for me.” He quickly left the house.
“She has a lot to cry about.” Lenny gave Sara and Randal a look of reproach before going back to the kitchen.
Randal put his hands in his pocket and said, “Lea is great, isn’t she?” He left the house whistling.
Barbara was driving the rental car from the airport toward Lachlan House. She hadn’t been this nervous since her first show on Broadway. Harry had arranged that for her. As often happened, all she had to do was say she’d always dreamed of that, andvoilà!she was offered the starring role. That she did it without pay and Harry’s company was in charge of the publicity had helped. She’d had to endure a little backstabbing from the other players, but not too bad.
Her hands on the steering wheel were shaking. When she’d first thought about how to appear in Lachlan, she’d imagined arriving in a limo. She’d have twenty pieces of matching luggage, and she’d do the full star treatment. Dazzle them. She’d let Roy’s son, Jack, kiss her hand.
But in the end, she couldn’t do it. She wanted them tolikeher. She decided she’d play Susan fromSunday Morning, one of her top grossing movies. She packed a corn-fed wardrobe. Should she put her hair in braids?
It was her son who made her realize how ridiculous she was being.
“Mom,” he said. “Are you going to arrive singing ‘Surrey with the Fringe on Top’?”
Children could be brutal. In the end, she packed her own clothes in a couple of Harry’s beat-up old suitcases—and twelve pounds of makeup in a separate case. A woman had to look good, didn’t she?
She flew first class, wearing the necessary heavy sunglasses and a designer jacket. She spent the night in downtown Fort Lauderdale, right on Broward, and the next morning, she took her time getting ready to go.
So now butterflies were doing leaps in her stomach—which wasn’t nearly as flat as she’d like it to be. She thought of their reason for restaging that party.
Exactly what did they know? Billy had been so afraid of his father and brothers that at first he’d kept the Palm Room locked tight. Fortunately, that hadn’t slowed her down in getting inside it. All she’d had to do was bat her lashes at gorgeous Roy Wyatt and she was in.
Roy, she thought.Roy, Roy, Roy.
His son, cute little Jack, would be grown up by now. She’d only seen him once. He was ten or eleven and he’d looked at his father with angry, resentful eyes. She’d tried to talk to him, but he wanted nothing to do with her.
“Leave him alone,” Roy said. “He likes his new dad better than me.” There was pain in his voice.
Maybe it was the pain she felt coming from Roy that made her first notice him. Or maybe it was his deep, rich, male voice. Or his beautiful face and his big, muscular body. More likely, it was the pure, undiluted maleness that surrounded him. It was a strong contrast to her life at home!
At a stoplight, she closed her eyes in memory. She’d only spent a week near Roy, but it had been everything to her.
The driver in the car behind her tapped the horn. She waved an apology and continued driving.What do they know?she wondered.Of course it had to do with that bastard, Derek Oliver. He’d found out the truth. Had these people also figured it out?
Please, she thought,don’t let them know what happened. Please.
She slowly pulled into the wide concrete driveway of Lachlan House. There were a couple of cars there, one a cute red-roofed MINI Cooper. Beside it was a pickup truck so battered it looked like it had been used to haul angry bears.
Roy drove a truck just like that, she thought as she got out of the car. As she looked up at the house, her mind filled with memories. She and Roy’d had to sneak about, but after Derek Oliver was gone, they’d had nothing but joy.
She was so deep in her thoughts that she didn’t hear the rumble of the motorcycle until it was almost in front of her. And when she did hear it, she froze. Every sense, her eyes, ears, and even her skin, put themselves on hold. Coming toward her was Roy’s Harley. She’d recognize it anywhere.
And sitting on it was a man who had a broad-shouldered, long-legged body that was exactly like Roy’s. He stopped a few feet from her and took off his black helmet.
“Hello,” he said.
It was Roy’s body, Roy’s face, Roy’s voice.
Barbara Adair fainted.
Sara saw Jack carrying the inert movie star into the living room. Kate, her eyes red but face smiling, hurried down the stairs, with Lea close behind her.Great, Sara thought,Kate seems to have acquired yet another mother.She hoped three was the limit.
At the sight of Barbara Adair, everyone came out of wherever they were and gravitated toward her.What was she like in life?they seemed to ask.
But Sara went the other way, sliding into the shadows, deeply glad that everyone was busy elsewhere. There was nothing an introvert liked better than disappearing. “They” were occupied so she could slip away, unseen, with no one asking where she was.
