Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649) (28 page)

I walked to the end of the phone cord, away from Piet. “That's really nice of you to be concerned, but they think he's on a train. We're fine.”

He cleared his throat, then said, “I thought if you were anxious or anything, I could come keep you company. You know, keep an eye on things with you.”

I turned my back on the man on the sofa, who already had his eyes on me. “I appreciate that, I really do. And I might have taken you up on it, but . . .”

“But you already have company?”

“Yes, I do.”

“The fireman?”

I wasn't surprised he knew. Everyone knew everybody's business here, which was one of the reasons I wanted to get back to the city. “Yes.”

Matt could tell from my short replies that I wasn't alone, in private. “He's there right now. I'm sorry. I guess I shouldn't have butted in.”

“No, it's fine. I'm glad you called.”

“Well, I'm glad you're not by yourself. Now I can go to sleep without feeling I was letting your mother down.”

“My mother?”

“She told me to look after her kids. I figure you're one of them.”

I laughed, forgetting Piet across the room. “Only a friend of my mother's could lump her daughter in with the dogs.”

He laughed, too. “I'm sure you're her favorite.”

“Then you don't know her all that well.”

I heard the amusement fade from in his voice when he asked, “Maybe I could call after the firefighter leaves . . . ?”

So everyone knew Piet Doorn wasn't staying.

“Maybe. No, yes. That sounds good.” It did.

We said good-bye and I turned to look at Piet. He had turned the TV on, out of politeness, I guessed, so he didn't have to overhear my side of the conversation. The Yankees were playing, and winning.

“That was the dogs' vet.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“He was worried that I was alone.”

“Got that, too. He offer to come bodyguard?”

“Yes. He sounded glad you were here, though.”

Piet turned the TV volume down. “I'm sure he was.” Sarcasm dripped like the condensation on his empty beer bottle. “He's kicking his desk right now.”

“It's not like that.”

“He's a man. Trust me, it's exactly like that.” He clicked the TV off. “Now where were we?”

Top of the ninth inning, two outs. “You were sipping your beer and I was listening to my messages.”

“Not there. Before.”

Before I heard Matt's voice, I was considering taking my clothes off in the living room, under Piet's watchful eyes. Swinging for the bleachers.

That moment was gone. I couldn't talk to Matt one minute, then jump into bed with Piet the next.

Strike out.

CHAPTER 27

W
OULD HE STILL STAY AND HELP? That was the question. He looked pissed, and I couldn't blame him. He wasn't getting paid. Now he wasn't getting laid. He came to put out fires, besides, not babysit or locate a missing matriarch. Definitely not to have his libido squashed.

“I'll make another loop around your grandmother's house, then go to bed. If you hear or see anything suspicious, call me, or beep your car horn with the remote.”

So he wasn't going to leave tonight. Relief washed through me. I could be brave when I had to be. I felt better when I didn't have to.

He kissed me gently on his way out the door. He did not push nor show aggravation that I'd messed with his head for an hour. I liked him more for that. I did not like myself right now.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“Hey, that's life. I'll get over it, in about five years.” He smiled, then came back and kissed me again. This time his arms wrapped around me, holding me close, making me feel his strength, his hardness, his desire. “But I don't give up so easily.” When he stood back, I leaned against the wall to hold myself up. My knees sure as hell weren't going to do the job.

I'd turned away a man who kissed like that? Who could make me throb down to my toes with one soul-piercing, heart-stopping, blood-warming kiss? A genuine hero who was kind, besides? That was crazier than talking to insects from an alien world.

I couldn't muster up one good reason why I shouldn't be naked in his bed when he came back. This wouldn't be recreational sex, remorse in the morning. I liked Piet. I liked him a lot.

I could hear my cousin saying, “Go for it. Life is too short.”

I could hear my mother saying, “I didn't raise a tramp. Show some self-respect.”

I could hear my father saying, “Trust your instincts.”

I could hear Matt saying, “Maybe when he's gone.”

I could hear Elladaire whimpering. Now that I could handle. Less than a week and I had enough confidence that she wouldn't set the place on fire, and that I could solve most of her problems, if none of my own.

Elladaire was sleeping soundly when I got to her crib. “Wait, kiddo, in a few years you'll have to make all kinds of moral decisions. You don't want to cheapen yourself, or hold yourself too high to enjoy what life has to offer. Get your rest now, because you've got decades of second-guessing ahead of you.”

I went to bed. With Little Red. In a ratty sleep shirt. And I slept like a baby.

 

Usually I woke up to dog breath in my face. That morning I woke up to a man's bare, hard chest under my cheek. I jerked up so fast I almost got whiplash.

“Morning, sunshine,” Piet drawled.

“What are you doing here? Did we . . . ?”

“Hey, lady, if we did, you would remember, I promise. Maybe you dreamed about me, though? We could take up where your dream left off.”

He wore a half-smile and no shirt. I didn't know what was under the covers. Cross that out. I knew exactly what was under the sheet—I'd been lying right on top of it!—just not why it was here.

“A dog was asleep in my bed, and I thought I could keep a better eye on the house and the baby and you from here. Focused defense, they call it. Not splitting the zone of protection.”

I remembered all the threats. “Did you hear anything in the night?”

“A couple of snores, a murmur or two. Not my name, no matter how hard I listened. Speaking of hard . . .”

“Yeah, I've been meaning to get a new mattress.”

He smiled and got off the bed, wearing silk boxers with chili peppers on them. Hot.

“C'mon, get up. The kid'll be wanting breakfast and a change, and we've got a lot to do. Ever been on a snipe hunt?”

Half asleep, I was half turned on by the view of his lean, firm body with a strip of pale hair trailing down his chest to the peppers. I liked how he wasn't all musclebound like a body-building weight lifter, but didn't have an ounce of fat. He turned to pull on his jeans. Nice butt, too.

“Stop ogling. Snipe, remember.”

“I wasn't—”

He cleared his throat.

“Um, never heard of one.”

“The relatives used to send us kids on one every summer. To get rid of us, I realized years later. We had to wear boots and hats and carry nets and canteens and whistles to signal if we spotted one, but they never said what it looked like, or if it'd be in the trees or on the ground in the woods near our house. We spent hours searching for a creature I didn't think existed. The whole thing was like something out of
Alice in Wonderland
.”

“Did it? Exist, I mean?”

“Snipes do. They're birds, I found out later, but we never caught sight of one. I don't know if they hang out in that part of the country at all.”

“Is that what you think about the creature in the ditch? That it doesn't exist? That searching for Mama is a fool's errand?”

“I think we have to go find out. Do you have a whistle?”

“What do we need a whistle for?” Panic stuck a finger in my stomach. “You're not going far away from me out there, are you? What happened to keeping the cone of protection or whatever, together?”

“Cell phones don't work out there. No tower.”

No answer, either. My God, what if he took me out there and left me, payback for my leaving him unsatisfied?

Piet would never do such a thing. And if I repeated that enough times, I might believe it.

 

We couldn't go right away, naturally, not until we made arrangements for Elladaire. I called Janie at the hair salon to find out when her last appointment was. We could wait that long.

We took the three dogs and the baby in her stroller for a walk up to Grandma Eve's farm. The stand was doing good business for an off-season weekend. People still wanted fresh herbs and the sweet pale yellow corn the field workers had just picked that morning.

My grandmother offered us iced tea and muffins spread with the beach plum jelly she'd made this week, a new experience for Piet and Elladaire. I wouldn't touch the stuff, still remembering the head-to-toe poison ivy I got picking the damn things before someone remembered to teach the city kid about leaves of three, let it be.

 

Janie was waiting for us in front of my house with Joe the plumber in his pickup truck.

“I don't have room for all her stuff in my car,” she explained. “And Joe doesn't think the baby and I should be alone right now.”

Good guy, Joe. So I asked him to look again for Mama. He looked around, then spotted a dog bowl. He filled it from the garden hose and stared into it. I didn't see anything but dog hair floating on up but Joe said, “Just like before. Whatever it is, it's stuck tight.”

I touched the bracelet on my wrist. “But she's still alive?”

He scratched his head. “I've never found a deader. Can't recall looking, though.”

Joe and I carried out baby paraphernalia, what Janie'd left with me, what I managed to accumulate afterward. Piet unbuckled the car seat from my Outback, then started to take the portable crib apart.

Janie hugged and kissed the baby as if she hadn't seen her in a week. She also checked her top to bottom in case I'd damaged something.

“Are you sure she won't start any more fires?”

“She hasn't since she's been here.”

“Since he's been here, you mean.” Janie tilted her head toward Piet, who was bent over the crib.

I stepped into her line of sight. Let her admire Joe's plumber pants and half-moon rising, not Piet's butt. “He thinks she's fine.”

“But what if she's not? How will I know?”

“You'll know the first time she cries.”

“Then what am I supposed to do when Joe's truck catches on fire or my hair?”

Janie's hair was long and curly this week. I handed her one of my fire extinguishers.

Piet gave her his card. “Call me.”

I swear she batted her fake eyelashes at him.

I reminded Piet we were going out to the marshes. “You told me there's no cell reception out there.”

Now Janie looked stricken. She glanced at me, then at the baby.

“She'll be fine. And we absolutely have to go.”

Piet had the crib all folded up and in its carry case. “We can wait a couple of hours.”

No, we could not. I glared at all of them. “We've waited too long as is.”

Janie glared back. She picked up Elladaire, but handed her to Piet. She pulled some papers out of her purse. “Maybe you'll have time to make a poster for the benefit for Mary, like you agreed. I brought a picture of her and Elladaire, and all the details. The printer agreed to run them off for us for free. We're aiming for next Saturday, if you can fit that into your busy schedule.”

No thank you for taking care of her grandniece; no consideration that my life had been turned upside down, too; no appreciation that I was hurtling into the scary, swampy unknown without a seatbelt—to help her town.

“I'll get to it as soon as we come home.”

Now she did take the baby from Piet, which did not sit well with Elladaire. Maybe she'd picked up on the tension in the room, or saw her toys and books being taken away. “Pipi!” she wailed, holding her hands out to him.

I went to kiss her good-bye, and got as much affection as I'd gotten from Janie. “I'll come visit, sweetie, I promise.”

She wasn't consoled. Little Red started barking at the uproar. I picked him up before he bit someone, most likely me.

“Well, at least you'll believe she's safe now, as soon as you get to the end of the dirt road.”

Joe hitched up his pants and ran his hand over the hood of his truck, as if he was saying good-bye to it.

Jane strapped the baby into her seat. Elladaire was crying, leaving Piet. So was Janie.