Ghost Moon (17 page)

To her surprise, she immediately sank up to her ankles in ooze. As the brackish water rose, lapping at her calves instead of her toes, she looked down in dismay.

Without warning a hand caught her arm from behind, yanking her violently backward.

CHAPTER 25

OLIVIA SCREAMED, FLAILED, STUMBLED, AND would have fallen bottom-first into the muck if someone had not caught her under the arms in the nick of time.

‘‘What the
hell
do you think you’re doing?’’ It was Seth, she discovered, bending her head back to look at him from the ignoble position in which she found herself. He was scowling, his thick, straight brows nearly meeting over his nose as his eyes collided with hers. He looked, and sounded, equal parts angry, amazed, and alarmed.

‘‘What am
I
doing?’’ Olivia felt the panic that had exploded into life when she was grabbed from behind dissipate as quickly as it had come. ‘‘What are
you
doing, grabbing me like that? You scared the life out of me!’’

It was hard to project the true degree of her indignation, she discovered, when her bottom was approximately six inches above the muck and his hands under her arms were all that kept her out of it.

‘‘Didn’t you hear me calling you? I yelled, but you kept going like you were in some kind of trance. You walked straight into the damned lake, just like you were trying to . . . What the hell were you trying to do?’’

His face was flushed beneath its usual sun-bronze, and he seemed to be short of breath, as if he’d been running. He was handsome from any angle, Olivia discovered, still looking up at him from a position that made her practically supine. Though he frowned ferociously at her with his mouth set hard and his blue eyes snapping, her body responded with an instant quickening. She couldn’t believe her reaction to him under the circumstances, which were laughable, and after all her self-talk explaining away what she had lately felt when in his presence, and she wouldn’t allow it. This was
Seth,
for God’s sake. She simply would not think of him that way.

‘‘I said, what the hell were you trying to do?’’ His tone was so fierce that her eyes widened. It occurred to Olivia that she had frightened him, and that, in turn, was what had made him angry.

‘‘I was just trying to get over being afraid of the lake,’’ Olivia confessed in a milder tone than any she had used with him so far. ‘‘What did you think I was trying to do, drown myself?’’

She’d meant that last question to be humorous, but from the uneasy flicker in his eyes she divined the truth.

‘‘You
did
think that, didn’t you?’’ She hooted, grinning, and for a minute she thought he was going to drop her into the goo. His mouth tightened, his eyes darkened, and then she was being thrust back into an upright position, his hands leaving her just as soon as he saw that she could stand alone.

‘‘Next time you plan to go wading, take somebody with you. It’s stupid as hell to go walking into the lake alone.’’ He looked down, and his expression became one of angry disgust. ‘‘You always were more trouble than anybody I ever knew.’’

She followed the direction of his gaze. Like herself, she discovered, he was some eight inches deep in slimy mud and water. Unlike herself, he was dressed for work in a navy suit, white shirt, red tie, and, Olivia presumed, expensive dress shoes just now hidden from sight because they were sunk deep into the ooze.

‘‘Oh, dear,’’ she said, her eyes meeting his, and then, because she just couldn’t help it, she grinned. ‘‘I appreciate you coming in after me. I really do.’’

‘‘Next time I’ll let you drown yourself.’’ His tone was so sour that Olivia had to laugh. He looked at her, his expression grim, and then the beginnings of a smile began to tug at the corners of his mouth. ‘‘Olivia, you are a pain in the ass.’’

‘‘Why, thank you, sir.’’

Moving carefully as the ooze bubbled and sank around him, Seth turned, lifted a dripping, slime-covered foot from the mud to the accompaniment of a sound like a vacuum seal being broken and the smell of rotten eggs, and set it down again halfway to shore. He repeated the operation with his other foot. Another step saw his right foot planted on the firmer ground of the muddy strip of beach. With his left foot, he was not as fortunate. Lifting it free of the goo one last time he swore, and Olivia saw as his foot came into view that it was minus its shoe.

‘‘Oh, dear,’’ she said again, knowing the response was inadequate but unable to come up with anything less inflammatory on the spur of the moment. As his gaze met hers for a pregnant instant, she began to giggle helplessly. He stared at her without saying anything at all, his expression thunderous. Then, swearing every inch of the way, he waded back in, bent, thrust an arm into the muck, and felt around for his shoe. Olivia, meanwhile, squelched toward shore.
Her
shoes stayed on her feet. Clambering onto solid ground, ooze coating her bare legs to midcalf, she turned to observe his efforts. A mosquito landed on her thigh just below the fringe of her cutoffs, and she slapped at it absently. Her gaze was on Seth. She watched as he straightened, shoe in hand, moving with an easy, athletic grace despite the impediment of being mired in over-the-ankle mud. He really had a great body. . . . Not that it interested her at all, she reminded herself firmly. She was watching him only because she was amused.

Mud covered the arm of his suit coat to the elbow, water poured from his recovered shoe, and a swarm of bugs—gnats or mosquitoes, she couldn’t be sure which—enveloped his head. As he turned for shore, swatting at the insects with his free hand and swearing under his breath, she saw that he looked extremely put out, to say the least.

She grinned at him.

‘‘I came down here looking for Chloe,’’ he said, fixing her with a look that dared her to laugh again as he took two long, squelching strides onto solid ground. ‘‘Have you seen her?’’

Olivia nodded cautiously, uncertain of how much he knew of his daughter’s transgression. Probably quite a bit, if he had come down to the lake in search of her. ‘‘I talked to her for a few minutes, but then she ran—I
think
she ran back to the house.’’

Seth made a disgusted noise, dropped his shoe on the ground, and worked his foot back into it. The shoe was muddy, slimy, stinky, and soaking wet, but no more so than both his pant legs from the knee down and his right arm from the elbow. ‘‘Apparently she threw a vase full of flowers at Mallory.’’

‘‘I know.’’

The look he sent her did not bode well for Chloe. ‘‘I don’t know whether to tan her backside until she can’t sit down or take her to see a psychiatrist. Mallory votes for the psychiatrist.’’ Against the bronze of his skin, his teeth flashed white suddenly in a quick, humorless grin. ‘‘At least, that’s what she says. Given the choice, though, I think she’d really go for the spanking.’’

‘‘Oh, Seth, you wouldn’t.’’

‘‘Wouldn’t I?’’ He sounded grim.

They turned toward the path, and as they made their way through the undergrowth Seth automatically reached out to cup Olivia’s elbow for support. As his hand was still slimy wet, Olivia jumped, startled, and looked down at it wide-eyed.

‘‘Oh, sorry,’’ he said, withdrawing the offending hand. A touch of real humor lit his eyes. ‘‘We’ve got a full house for supper tonight, by the way. Mallory, her
mother,
David and Keith, Charlie and Belinda, Phillip and Connie—Connie’s Phillip’s wife, I don’t think you’ve met her yet—and their kids, and Carl. Oh, yes, and Ira, I’m sure. No doubt I’m leaving someone out.’’

‘‘Good God,’’ Olivia said, appalled.

‘‘My feelings exactly. So of course I’m thrilled out of my mind to get home and find that my daughter has disgraced the pair of us again. The fact that I’m now going to have to face my future mother-in-law and explain how I ended up looking like the Creature from the Black Lagoon just adds an extra element of interest to what has been an already very interesting day.’’

They were almost to the path, and once again Seth reached automatically to support Olivia as they stepped out of the tangle of vegetation onto the well-trodden trail. This time, Olivia glanced down before he touched her. At her glance he remembered, grimaced apologetically, and withdrew his muddy hand. Olivia started walking with Seth behind her.

‘‘Why so many?’’ she asked over her shoulder, noting the ruined fairy house with a sideways glance as they passed it but not saying anything to draw his attention to it. He was already angry enough at Chloe as it was.

‘‘Charlie wanted to have a family meeting to discuss possible treatment options for Big John. And Mallory’s mother apparently went school shopping with Chloe and Mallory. Mallory needed her for moral support, she said, in dealing with my spoiled, capricious, totally undisciplined child. Of course, Mallory was kind of mad when she said all that. I’m pretty sure she only meant about two-thirds of it.’’

‘‘Seth.’’ Olivia turned abruptly to face him, one hand coming up to flatten against his shirtfront, stopping him in his tracks. He looked down at the dirt-streaked hand splayed out over his red silk tie, and then up into her eyes. His expression changed in that instant, becoming impossible to read. The anger seemed to have disappeared, but she couldn’t be sure what had replaced it. His eyes were narrowed and almost hard as Olivia looked up at him earnestly. ‘‘Does Chloe remind you of anyone?’’

One corner of his mouth lifted. ‘‘Linda Blair in
The
Exorcist
?’’

‘‘Seth!’’

He laughed. ‘‘All right, then, maybe that’s a little bit of a stretch. Who did you have in mind?’’

‘‘Me.’’

His eyes widened. ‘‘Good God, I’d almost rather have Linda Blair.’’

‘‘Seth, I’m serious!’’

‘‘So am I.’’

‘‘Fine.’’ Olivia turned on her heel and marched away from him. ‘‘If you’re too damned pigheaded to listen . . .’’

‘‘Livvy.
Livvy
.’’ He caught up with her, both hands closing around her upper arms, stopping her. The mud on his right hand was nearly dry, and anyway she didn’t care anymore if his hand was muddy, because she was suddenly too darned mad. He never would listen; he never had! He always thought he knew better than everybody else. . . .

‘‘Olivia.’’ He turned her around to face him, his hands still on her arms, a smile lurking around his mouth and in his eyes. ‘‘Wait. Tell me. Why does Chloe remind you of yourself?’’

‘‘Because she thinks nobody loves her,’’ Olivia said brutally, glaring up at him. She’d meant to be more tactful, but her newly resurfaced, long-simmering sense of injustice chased the tact right out of her.

He didn’t like that, she could see. For a moment his hands tightened almost painfully on her arms, and his eyes widened. Then his mouth twisted in a silent message of repudiation.

‘‘Bullshit,’’ he said.

That made her madder. ‘‘Think so?’’

‘‘Yeah, I think so. What do you mean, she thinks nobody loves her? I love her, and Mother loves her, and . . .’’

‘‘How does she know that? I’ve been here a week, Seth, and all I’ve seen you do is go off to work and go off to the hospital and go off here and go off there without so much as a thought for your daughter, and when you do finally see her you’re either fighting with her or telling her to behave. Do you think that feels like love to her? Aunt Callie’s good to her, but she’s desperately ill and can’t focus on Chloe like the child needs to be focused on. Martha’s fond of her, but she’s hired help. Mallory—well, I won’t even get into Mallory. And her mother—Chloe’s mother broke her heart by sending her home to you. The child feels
abandoned,
Seth. She needs your time and your attention, not punishment.’’

‘‘Bullshit!’’

‘‘It is not bullshit! It’s the truth, only you’re too damned stupid to see it!’’

They were standing practically nose-to-nose by this time, her hands clutching the lapels of his jacket for balance, his hands curled around her upper arms. In her flat shoes, the top of her head reached no higher than his chin, so she had thrown her head back to meet his glare head-on. She could feel the strength in his hands, the hard menace of his body, the anger that emanated from him in waves, and she wasn’t backing down an inch.

She never had.

‘‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!’’ he said through his teeth.

‘‘You just won’t listen! You never would listen! You always know everything, and everybody else is wrong, and—’’

‘‘Was I wrong about Newall Morrison? Huh? Was I? If you’d listened to me, instead of being so goddamned eager to climb into bed with that lowlife—’’

‘‘Shut up! You just shut up, Seth Archer!’’ Olivia yelled. Maddened, she jerked an arm free and slapped him full across the face. His head jerked to one side. The sound of the blow reverberated in the air. Her palm stung. Horrified at herself the instant after she did it, Olivia could only stare at him as the imprint of her hand on his cheek reddened and his eyes bore furiously into hers.

It was an uncanny replay of the quarrel they’d had just before she’d eloped with Newall. She had slapped Seth then, too.

‘‘Go to hell,’’ she whispered, shaken, and pulled the arm he still held free. He let her go; she was under no illusions that he couldn’t have held her there if he’d wanted to. Head high, she turned and stalked away from him, up the path, heading for the house. She would go straight upstairs, and with any luck no one would even see her.

The best-laid plans of mice and men . . . The entire company was assembled on the front veranda, enjoying predinner drinks and watching the sunset, when Olivia emerged at the top of the bluff. As the hum of voices and laughter alerted her to their presence, she hesitated. Her first impulse was to skulk along the hedge until she reached the back door. But they would see her—
someone
was bound to see her; there wasn’t enough shrubbery between herself and the house to provide any real concealment—and then she would look like an utter fool.

So Olivia walked up to the house along the path as nonchalantly as though she hadn’t just had a terrible fight with Seth, as though she hadn’t gotten mired in mud and heard voices calling to her and tried to calm an angry eight-year-old and in general been through what amounted to an emotional wringer. She even managed to fix a pleasant expression on her face as she reached the steps.