Moonlight on Monterey Bay (2 page)

Sam still wasn’t sure what was going on here. He had told Eleanor, his assistant, to call the Oceanic Interior Design Firm. Elizabeth had used them for everything. But who the devil was this? He suspected he and Eleanor had a little talking to do.

“Okay,” Sam said out loud, extending a hand. “Hello, Ms. Ames. I’m Sam Eastland.”

“Mr. Eastland.” Maddie nodded solemnly. There, now she had it all back on a firm footing again. But the job was becoming complicated. There was more to this expensive view than the house and the ocean and the beach. The moody owner of East of the Ocean, as the house was called, looked as if he had stepped out of an ad for Marlboros. “All right, let’s get down to business,” she said. “As you know, your wife asked us to come out, see what needed to be done, then draw up some rough designs—”

“My wife?”

“Yes. And she neglected to mention you, but as long as you’re here, if you’d like to show me around, that would be fine. If not, you can be about your swimming and I’ll be happy to find my own way around.”

“I don’t have a wife.”

“Oh.” Maddie frowned and checked the address again. The Eastland property. She was in the right place. She looked up. “I believe a woman called.”

“My assistant. Eleanor Williams.”

Maddie nodded. “Of course.” His assistant. “I shouldn’t have presumed it was your wife. But she seemed to be in charge.”

“Yes, Eleanor is an in-charge kind of person. She handles many facets of my life.”

“I see.” Maddie looked down at the Mexican tiles on the floor and tried not to think of the details of this man’s life that were being handled by Eleanor. The tiles were damp, glistening, a blush pink in color—like her face at the moment.

“Eleanor is very competent,” Sam said. “She’s going to get the place in order, take care of what it needs. It needs something, don’t you think?”

Maddie glanced through the wide archways that led from the foyer to the rest of the house. For as far as the eye could see, the home was absolutely bare.

“It depends. Are you a monk?”

He gave a short laugh.

“If not, then some furniture wouldn’t be out of line.” Maddie smiled. She looked around again. “I presume you just bought this place?”

Sam paused before answering. He probably should have gotten rid of the beach house, as he had everything else, and started fresh. He could have bought a new place, one without a past. He
should
have, and now, suddenly, he had no idea why he hadn’t. He looked up and noticed the young woman watching him, waiting for an answer, curious at his reticence. “No,” he said shortly. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”

His manner was abrupt, evasive, and Maddie felt as if she had overstepped an invisible line. There had been sadness in his voice when he had answered her, and she resolved to stay clear of issues involving Sam Eastland’s past.

She followed him into the living area, hurrying to keep up with his quick strides. The long, sunny room ran the length of the house, then soared up two stories to huge skylights. A wide wooden deck with a hot tub and a sunken fire pit followed the lines of the house in back, and stone steps led from the backyard down the shallow, treed hillside to the beach.

The kitchen opened off the living room, a clean, well-lit area with an oval work island and not a utensil or dishrag or coffeepot in sight. The bedrooms were upstairs, equally empty, equally sunny, and equally a designer’s dream.

“So that’s it,” Sam said. They were standing in
the living room, where they had started. Beyond the windows and treetops a fleet of sailboats skimmed along the water.

Maddie drew her attention away from the view and glanced around again. Her next step would have been to sit down at the dining-room table and talk her client through a questionnaire that would reveal needs and tastes and lifestyles. But since there were no tables or chairs, Maddie picked a smooth wall near the fireplace and sat down on the floor.

Sam watched with reluctant admiration as she moved, her lean body folding as gracefully as a sixteen-year-old’s. At first he had been annoyed with the woman’s presence. The whole purpose in coming down here was to be alone. But there was something about her that required a second look, then a third. For good or for bad, she jarred him. Each time he looked at her, her beauty seemed to have deepened, emerging gradually, like a moonflower. He had trouble now looking away.

“Would you care to join me?” she asked. She pushed a stray lock of dark hair from her forehead.

“For what?”

“For the next part of this process. As long as you’re here, I need to ask you some questions.”

He frowned. “I don’t have time for that. Call Eleanor.”

“Does Eleanor know your favorite color? Your entertaining patterns? Whether you like the moon
at your head while you sleep? How often you cook? How many books you own? What size—”

“Ridiculous!” Sam stopped her midsentence. “No one needs to know all those things about me. What the hell are you, a reporter in disguise?” His sharp tone blanketed the unnerving sensation of wanting to trace the curve of her neck with his fingertips. It was long and tan, a perfect curved column.

“No, sir,” Maddie said. “These are important questions. They guide me in planning. We want you to like the house when it’s finished, Mr. Eastland. And if I don’t know anything about your tastes, how will I know what will satisfy you?”

“If you’re good at what you do, I’ll like it.” Sam leaned against the wall. He regarded her thoughtfully. She had great eyes, powerful eyes, he thought, full of vigor and life. But so young. Or did he simply feel old? Maybe that was it, the rest of the world was automatically suffused with youth in his presence. At thirty-five, he was aging fast.

Maddie looked down at her list of questions, then back up again. “We’ll be wasting each other’s time if you don’t give me some idea of what you like and don’t like.”

“Work out some ideas. I’ll pay you for your time. And then, no matter what, your time won’t be wasted, at least not as far as you’re concerned, right?”

“Well—”

“And whether my time is wasted is my business.”

Maddie frowned. This wasn’t the way Sadie had taught her to work with a client. And she didn’t know beans about this man. Maybe he liked pink and blue and flowered chintz, for all she knew. She couldn’t just pick things out and hope for the best. The project would be doomed to failure.

Sam Eastland was walking toward the open doors to the deck, talking as he went. He felt a sudden need to get air, to get away from this woman whose gaze didn’t waver, whose eyes seemed to dance in the late-afternoon sun. Who was she anyway? “If you want to hand in ideas,” he said briskly, “send them to my San Jose office in two days.”

“Two days?” Maddie’s pencil flew through the air.

“Is there an echo in here?” he asked. He stopped briefly, glancing back across the room.

Maddie stood up. He seemed perturbed now, as if he had been in the house too long. “Two days isn’t much time.”

“All I want is some furniture so I can use this place. And once I make a decision on the proposal, I want the place finished. In a week or two if possible.”

“A week or two! Where do you want the furniture to come from, a flea market?”

Ignoring her remark, Sam held out his hand to her in a perfunctory manner. His hand was large, Maddie noticed. And tan. A large, tan, firm hand.

When she shook it, her own hand vanished completely in its grasp. He didn’t let go immediately, as she had expected, but held it a minute longer, and Maddie had the odd sensation that he
couldn’t
let go, that their hands were pressed together by some magnetic force. A jolt of heat passed through her, straight up her arm to her heart. She looked up at him in surprise, her eyes widening.

He appeared to be confused. Maddie saw—no, she felt it—something strong and powerful passing between them. She cleared her throat.

Sam dropped her hand. “I’m going now,” he said. “You can let yourself out, I presume, the same way you let yourself in—”

The last words were said as he headed out the French doors toward the deck. He had spoken as if a board meeting were waiting for his presence, or perhaps a meeting with the president or governor.

Maddie gathered her things, and a few minutes later she peered through the trees down to the private strip of beach. He was standing barefoot at the water’s edge, his hands on his hips, looking out over the whitecapped waves as if the ocean itself held some profound message for him.

TWO

“Eleanor, come in here for a minute, please.”

Sam Eastland snapped off the intercom and sat back in his leather chair. He clasped his hands behind his head and waited, gazing out the window. From the fifteenth floor of his San Jose building he had a commanding view of lush, wealthy Silicon Valley, of the mirrored glass-fronted buildings, the new highways, and other signs of how the computer industry had altered the California landscape.

These days the view brought a mingling of emotions, no longer the pure thrill that had come in the early years when he was building Eastland Enterprises from little more than an idea and a dream. Now his success was also a poignant reminder that he wasn’t the superman he had once set out to be. He hadn’t ended up with it all. On his way to business success, he had failed in some big ways; he had lost a lot.

He glanced at Sara’s picture, framed in silver and resting on the corner of his wide desk. At five years old, she bore a resemblance to him that was becoming more and more evident—the intense blue eyes, the set to her jaw. A stab of deep remorse shot through him, familiar, yet sudden in its attack, and Sam winced. But when he heard Eleanor walk through the door, he pushed the emotion back in place and looked up, forcing his mind to attend to the here and now.

“What is it, Sam?” Eleanor Williams stood near the door.

“Eleanor, I went down to the beach house yesterday and ran into one of those interior-design persons.”

“I believe her name is Madeline Ames.”

“Who the hell is she?”

Eleanor frowned. “I don’t know who she is, Sam, I never used a designer in all my sixty-one years. It’s a shameful waste of money, if you ask me. But I never argue with the boss, so I called, and I suppose she was the person they sent. Now, why do you have this bee in your bonnet?”

Sam shook his head. So that was it. Eleanor had misheard his instructions. Instead of Oceanic Interiors, the firm he usually used, she had called this other outfit.

“How was she?” Eleanor asked.

“Probably okay, but not right for the job. I told her to go ahead with some ideas, but I thought better
of it last night. Let’s get Carole whatever-the-hell her name is from Oceanic Interiors out there.” He began flipping through a black Rolodex. Madeline Ames had come back to haunt him on the long, winding drive back from the beach house. There was something in her look; it penetrated, was too personal. At least that was what he told himself. Besides, she wasn’t right for the house. He hadn’t been around a lot of designers, but none of the ones he had met had been anything like her. The old familiar firm would do fine. All he wanted was furniture. And he couldn’t shake the feeling that Madeline Ames would bring more than that into his life.

Eleanor was standing in front of his desk now, frowning at him. “Listen, Sam, what difference does it make which firm does the beach house? I’m sure this gal is good. She was lovely on the phone, and maybe it will be a welcome change.”

He shook his head, forked his fingers through his dark blond hair. “We’ve used Oceanic before. It’s easier.”

Eleanor rested her hands on the shiny desktop. She leaned forward, her handsome face stopping inches from his. “If you want my opinion, Sam, the last thing you need is Elizabeth’s decorator.”

Sam closed his eyes and sighed. Eleanor had been with him since those long-ago days when he’d been worth little more than the broken-down Chevy he drove. She had stuck by him, and when the computer
chips fell in the right place, as she liked to tell people, she had stayed around to reap her proper glory. It was all said with great affection; Eleanor was his mainstay. She made a habit of telling him exactly what she thought—and usually he listened. But today he was tired. And he wanted furniture in the beach house so he had a place to go. The old firm would know what to do without a lot of input from him; it was the easiest way.

“Call them, Eleanor,” he said.

“The Oceanic is such a stuffy outfit, and I’m not crazy about doing business with them. And what about Madeline Ames?”

“Ms. Ames is a businesswoman. She’ll understand. Pay her for her time.” He tapped his Mont Blanc pen on the desk, closing the topic. “And now I need to see the specs on that new program.”

Eleanor took a deep breath, rummaged through the stack of papers on the corner of his desk, and slapped a, piece of paper down in front of him.

It was midafternoon when Maddie got the call from Eleanor.

Her heart sank. “I don’t understand,” Maddie said. “I haven’t even done anything for him to dislike. How can I be fired before I’ve been hired?” And how would she break this to Joseph? He was counting on this job. The beach house was visible in Santa Cruz. It would
bring in business and put him in a better position to retire. “Are you sure he won’t reconsider?”