For All of Her Life (23 page)

“We wouldn’t want to disappoint them,” Tara muttered.

When Kathy narrowed her eyes, Tara smiled sweetly.

“Then I think I’ll just grab coffee and run upstairs with it and get a few things together,” Kathy said.

This time, she escaped before Jordan could restrain her and raced ahead of them into the main house, annoyed with herself for desperately wishing the Stairmaster had at least hidden half the cellulite in her thighs when she could be concentrating on far more important, more adult, things—like world peace.

Either way, her wishing was farfetched.

It didn’t matter.

Peggy had opened up the house, and Kathy was able to fly swiftly into it through the porch entrance. She hurried through the living room, smelled the coffee upon entering the dining room, and knew that she couldn’t resist. She made a beeline for it, intending to do as she had said, snag a cup and race up the stairs. But Peggy was there, setting a cover over a chafing dish, and she smiled with such warmth and sincerity that Kathy knew she couldn’t run right out.

“Kathy, excuse me, but you do look like a million bucks!” Peggy told her. “That’s a beautiful suit. Where did you get it? Is that a New York style?”

Kathy opened her mouth to answer. “I... er... just picked it up somewhere along the line.”

“You look much better than that one!” Peggy whispered, inclining her head toward the rear of the house, from which Jordan’s and Tara’s voices came to them.

Kathy poured a cup of coffee.

“She seems very sweet.”

Peggy made a face. “Like saccharine.”

“She’s stunning.”

“She’s after him, big time.”

“Peggy, he’s a free agent. If she wants him happy—”

“He hasn’t been happy since you left.”

“Really? Why, she’s gorgeous. She’s young. She’s perfect.”

“You underestimate Jordan.”

“Right. What man wouldn’t be swayed by a woman like that?”

“Kathy—”

“Oh, Peggy!” Kathy set her cup down, swiftly hugging the wonderful woman who had once been her housekeeper. “Jordan and I are over. Have been over. You make me feel as badly as my daughters do. I can’t fix things now. And apparently he’s been intimate with Tara for quite some time.”

Peggy shrugged. “A while.”

“And I have a great life. Honestly, I do.”

Peggy nodded, adjusting silver on the buffet table. “I guess so. You’re dating a very nice young man.” She eyed Kathy. “Young man, I repeat.”

“Women are supposed to date younger men—because we outlive them. My mother told me so.”

Peggy grinned. “Oh, by the way, Sally is on her way to the house.”

“What?” Kathy had been picking up her coffee again, anxious to flee up the stairs before Tara and Jordan reached them. She was so startled she nearly spilled it. “She told me she wasn’t coming until tomorrow or Monday.”

“Seems everyone is anxious to arrive.” Peggy sniffed toward the rear of the house. Jordan and Tara had obviously paused to talk outside.

What were they saying to one another? Kathy couldn’t help but wonder.

“Anyway, Sally says she decided there just wasn’t any reason for her not to come earlier. She called the airlines and had no problem changing her ticket. She called here about fifteen minutes ago to make sure it was all right to come on along. I assured her Jordan will be delighted to see her whenever she can get here. I knocked on your door to see if you wanted a word with her, but I didn’t get an answer. I thought you might still be sleeping.”

“I must have been out by the pool,” Kathy said, staring into her coffee.

Peggy didn’t say anything, but Kathy could feel the question in her gaze.

“Hmmm. Didn’t see you there.”

“Well, I think I have to... brush my hair. Or something,” Kathy murmured. She must get upstairs. She wanted some time to herself.

She needed a shower. Before her mother got here. And she needed to recoup some poise, some composure.

“Kathy, there’s all kinds of breakfast here,” Peggy offered.

“I won’t be fifteen minutes!” Kathy said cheerfully. “Catch Mom when she comes in, will you? She’s always in dire need of coffee this early in the morning.”

“It isn’t early. It’s just past ten.”

“She’ll have been up a while. She’ll need more coffee.”

With that, Kathy managed to flee back up the stairs.

To her room.
Her room.

She swallowed the coffee as if it were a shot of liquor she could gulp. It scorched her throat. She started to sit at the foot of the bed and changed her mind. She really needed that shower. She hurried into the bathroom and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

What had Tara Hughes seen when she had looked at her? A gorgon?

Her hair was wild, a tangled auburn mane. Her eyes were wide, still dilated, very amber. Panic seemed to be good for her. And the bathing suit, brief though it was, was a very attractive one, designed, oddly enough, to minimize any anatomical failings with its clean cut. She looked good. Not like a thirty-year-old model, but good. Attractive. Panic even seemed to make her look sexy.

Or was it...

... Jordan?

Being with Jordan again. Almost being caught being with Jordan again.

Well, Tara was here now.

Auld lang syne was not in the past. But...

She didn’t want to think about Jordan, Tara, herself. Or herself and Jordan, or Tara and Jordan. She wanted to curl up somewhere, pretend that the night might have gone on forever.

That nothing had ever gone wrong between them. That she was really home.

She wasn’t, she told herself firmly. She was a big girl. She’d wanted sex with her ex-husband. She’d had it. Time to shower and get on.

She stripped off the bathing suit and stepped into the shower stall, turning the water on. It was so cold she jumped. That was good. She should have taken a very cold shower quite a while ago.

Such thoughts didn’t help. And somewhere in the middle of her shower, she realized that warm tears were colliding with the wet spray on her cheeks. She shouldn’t have come back. It hurt more than she had ever imagined. Even more now that she had touched the past.

The shower kept running. Washing away the foolish tears that should have all been shed long ago. Despite the pain, she was glad to be here. She couldn’t bring back the past. She did have something back of Jordan, though, and it mattered, it counted, because he had been a part of so very much of her life. He thought someone had caused Keith’s death all those years ago, and strange things were happening. It was time to exorcise some ghosts. She would do so.

With dignity.

“Mom!”

The water was still spraying down on her when Kathy heard the door burst open and herself being called. She turned off the shower and grabbed a towel, leaping from the tub. It was Alex who had come in.

Her daughter was standing by the bed, hands on her hips, staring at Kathryn. She wore her sandy blond hair to her shoulders, with a sweep that half covered one green eye. In her teal bikini, she stood barefoot, her flesh a golden tan, her slim young figure stunning.

“She’s
here!” Alex announced.

“She?” Kathy inquired, though she knew perfectly well who
she
was.

“Tara.”

“I know. I’ve seen her.”

“She was supposed to be modeling on some sandspit island,” Alex said.

“Let me get dressed. I’ll be right with you.”

Kathy closed the bathroom door and slipped back into the bathing suit she had discovered she rather liked. She opened the bathroom door and came out, sitting beside Alex on the bed and placing an arm around her. “I wish I hadn’t come here,” Kathy said.

“Mom, it’s been the best thing in the world—”

“Alex, I’m glad for me, and even for your father, that I did. We may finally be friends. But I’m sorry because of you and Bren. Your dad has apparently been seeing Tara fairly regularly. It makes no difference that she arrived here a day or so early.”

“We were supposed to have today alone. As a family.”

“You forget. Jeremy is here.”

“Mom. There’s nothing between you and Jeremy.”

“Your dad doesn’t know that—does he?”

“Of course not.” Alex waved a hand in the air. “Mother, don’t be so naive. Everyone knows men want what other men have. That’s a fact of life.”

Kathy smiled. “Oh, really? Well, what happens when one particular man has what scores of others pant over daily?”

“Mom—”

“She seems nice enough.”

Alex sighed. “She’s all right, I guess. Not too bright, but not dumb-blond stupid. And I’ll tell you one thing, she isn’t going to keep Dad long one way or the other.”

“Why?” Kathy asked curiously.

Alex shrugged. “She hangs. He likes his freedom. His place and her place. She’s always had her own room here. I don’t think he ever sleeps through the night with her, and he didn’t really want her this week.”

“How do you know? Did he tell you that for a fact?”

Alex hesitated. “No. But something has been bothering him for a while. And I
know
him. He wanted this week for Blue Heron.” She hesitated again. “He did tell Tara that if she was unhappy about the time he needed to spend with others this week he would understand if she wanted to go her own way.”

“He said this to her in front of you?” Kathy inquired skeptically.

“Well...” Alex murmured. “All right, I was eavesdropping. It was the weekend I came down after classes let out for summer.”

“You knew then that he was planning this, and you didn’t say a word to me? Oh, that’s right, you wouldn’t have had time to warn me, your mother, you were busy talking to the newspapers!”

Alex flushed. “Dad asked me not to warn you. He said he wanted to speak to you, that he wanted your decision to be reached by discussion between the two of you. You mean you’re not going to yell at me for eavesdropping?”

“Alex, you’re almost twenty-one. I can’t really yell at you for anything. However, it was incredibly rude of you to spy on your father and Tara. Don’t do it anymore.”

Alex grinned, then grew somber again. “I just wish she’d stayed away a while longer.”

“Well, she’s here, and we’re all going to be polite and make the best of it, right?”

“Thank God for Jeremy. He is so wickedly good-looking.”

“Alex—”

“He has to make Dad jealous.”

“A man doesn’t always covet what another man has, and jealousy isn’t necessarily a good thing. Trust is the most important ingredient in any relationship. Love and trust. If you have those two—”

“Did you guys have them?”

Kathy smiled. “Once. But we lost them. So don’t go through life thinking it’s good to torture someone you love with jealousy.”

“You did invite Jeremy down.”

Kathy opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. “That’s not quite the same.”

“You were chicken about coming alone?”

“That doesn’t sound great either, but it’s closer.” She inhaled, started to speak again, then broke off as she heard her name called by someone down below.

“Kathy? You up there?”

Wincing, she told Alex, “Gram.”

“That’s super. Isn’t it? I mean, I love Gram. Don’t you?”

“Of course. I just wasn’t ready to have
her
here yet.”

Alex grinned, shaking her head. “Poor Mom! Well, I guess we’d better get back down. You know Dad. When he moves, he goes like lightning. He’ll be ready to head out soon, and I’m starving.”

“Kathy? Alex?”

Alex jumped up, hurrying to the door. “Hi, Gram! We’ll be right down.” She looked at her mother. “Come on.”

“I need to get a cover-up—and dig out my deck shoes.”

“There’s plenty of stuff on the
Sand Shark.”

“You’d better bring a cover-up,” she told her daughter sternly. “That bathing suit is...”

“Indecent?” Alex queried, arching a brow.

“Almost.”

“Well”—she pointed at her mother—“that one is most certainly decadent.”

“Really? Should I find something else?”

“No! It’s great-decadent. Come on, Mom, give Tara a run for it.”

“I’m not after your father.”

“Okay, then save the family honor. You look great. You used to just walk on the boat in your bathing suit and throw on one of Dad’s shirts when the sun got to be too much. Be daring. Be natural. Besides, we’re going diving and he has a storage room full of wet suits and skins. You’ll be covered up soon enough.”

“I still need deck shoes,” Kathy insisted.

In the end, she slipped into deck shoes and an old shirt, which, beneath Alex’s challenging gaze, she wore open. They came down the stairs arm in arm, found out that Sally had given up waiting for them and gone in to breakfast, and walked on into the huge dining room with its wide windows. Sally was sipping coffee and chatting with her ex-son-in-law, Bren was picking apart a bagel, and Jeremy and Tara were engaged in a conversation at the far end of the table, their heads lowered. Neither of the pair noticed the newcomers.

“Darlings!” Sally said cheerfully, offering her daughter an arched-brow perusal as she hugged her granddaughter. “You both look lovely. You do take your time, though. I’m glad you can join me for a minute’s worth of breakfast before taking off.”

“You’re not coming on the boat, Mom?” Kathy asked her. “Jordan won’t mind waiting for you to get settled and changed, I’m sure.”

“Not in the least,” Jordan said politely. His gaze was impassive when his eyes met Kathy’s.

“I know, and thanks,” Sally said. “But I’m going to settle into my room and take a good book out to the pool. Maybe do some catching up with Peggy. Angel and Joe are going—you know Joe, he’s always been the dive-master for all of you.”

“Gram, even if you don’t want to dive, it will be a nice trip out,” Alex said. “Tara and Jeremy are coming.” She managed to keep her distaste from her voice and smile. Her father’s eyes were on her.

“I’ll be fine on my own. You young people just have a nice day. Besides, Rye is due in, Jeremy tells me. And I haven’t seen him in years. We can discuss really old music together.”

Kathy arched a brow at Jordan. He hadn’t mentioned to her that his father was coming. She would be glad to see Rye, too. He was a fine gentleman, he’d been the best father-in-law in the world, always seeing if she needed something when the girls were young, when Jordan had been in the service. “How nice,” she said, and she meant it most sincerely.