Renegade Player (3 page)

Willy stood on one foot, rubbing her calf with the burning sole of her other one as she gazed raptly at the low, superbly engineered piece of machinery. “So you’re the Porsche,” she breathed reverently. “It’s gorgeous.”

He leaned against the side and leveled her a gaze that, had she been looking at him, might have puzzled her. “Are you a fan?”

“I could easily become one,” she admitted, stroking the flawless finish wistfully.

“Maybe you’d care to give it a road test sometime?” Her unbelieving eyes flew up to beseech him. “Could I? Really? The only thing I like better than driving a good car is eating a good meal, and it would have to be Cordon Bleu to compare with this.”

He looked at her skeptically. “That’s a bit hard to believe, Willy.”

“What, that I like food and cars?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

“You certainly aren’t the first woman to admire a good car, but you’re the first I’ve run across who put them in the same category as food. Come on, this way up.” He indicated the stairs in the comer of the garage that comprised the first floor of his cottage.

“Well, I don’t see why not,” she said, following his long, powerful legs in their trim-fitting chinos. “They’re both fun. I get a kick out of feeling all that horsepower under my hands, but when I’m hungry, no mere automobile can compare with hot, thin, lace cornbread, dripping with butter, and fried bluefish that just came out of the surf half an hour before it was popped into the pan. Now, that’s my idea of heaven.” She followed him into a room that was approximately the same size and proportions as her own living room, but there the resemblance ended.

“I think there’s a flaw in your reasoning somewhere along the line, Willy, and besides, that strikes me as pretty mundane fare here on the banks, especially for a gal who appreciates a better line of sports cars.”

“Oh, I assure you, when it comes to food, I’m no snob.” She settled back into a circular chair of rattan and white leather and watched as he put out a plate of pink shrimp, white scallops, and a bowl of grated cheddar.

“All right, Willy Silverthorne, let’s say the magic words and turn this into something that’ll melt your heart.” He got out the container of sour cream and a large mixing bowl and proceeded to put the ingredients together while Willy looked on in rapt admiration, never once wondering how he came to know her name when she hadn’t mentioned it to him.

That was the beginning of a relationship Willy found increasingly satisfying, although something deep inside her whispered a warning that she must not allow herself to forget the lesson she had learned a year ago in Florida.

On that first Saturday, after sampling the bubbling hot coquilles along with fresh spinach salad and German wine for a late lunch, Willy and Kiel Faulkner spent the rest of the afternoon in his house listening to his favorite Bizet opera,
The Pearlfishers.

Never one to stand when she could sit, nor to sit when she could recline, Willy found herself relaxing on a down-cushioned sofa under windows that opened to let the salt breeze blow in over her. She had run back to her own place long enough to change the skimpy halter for a T-shirt and she wished now she had taken time to change her shorts as well, as she tugged the shirt down over her gaping jeans. Closing her eyes to the strains of the haunting music, with its counterpoint of raucous gulls and seething surf, she was totally content, and once, when she opened her eyes to see Kiel’s gaze on her freckled abdomen, she tugged at her shirt again and apologized for her attire. “Sorry about that.” She grinned lazily. “I’ve gained three pounds since I came here and I haven’t gotten around to sewing on all the buttons I’ve popped off.”

Kiel surveyed her frankly, his eyes appreciating her offbeat but very potent style of beauty. “Don’t mind me ... I just live here.”

Rolling over on her stomach, Willy cupped her chin in her hand. “It’s a great place, isn’t it? I’ve been here several months now and I hope I’ll still be here by the time I’m drawing social security.”

“Somehow, when the time comes, I doubt that you’ll be counting on a social-security check for subsistence,” Kiel said, his eyes straying from her heavy crop of sun-streaked hair to the bare feet that waved in loose time with the music. “I expect there’ll be a long line of men who’ll be delighted to offer you something a good deal more substantial than that. Matter of fact, I’ve met several of them at the office.” His easy smile was not reflected in eyes so dark they seemed to absorb the light, but then, Willy was too well fed and relaxed to notice that fact.

Nevertheless, she wasn’t eager to talk about the men at CCE, nor about the one who had left, the one whose place Kiel had taken as head of the firm. “Maybe,” she admitted dubiously, “but it’s a good feeling, being your own boss. I don’t think I’m anywhere near ready to trade that freedom in on a husband, no matter how much security he offered me.”

“Who said anything about a husband?” Kiel quipped laconically as the last record came to a clicking end.

Willy slanted him a puzzled look, and then with a dismissing moue she said, “Nobody, I guess. I just assumed—”

“Women often do. Assume, that is,” he added enigmatically, unfolding his considerable length to turn off the stereo. The sound quality was superb, but then, Willy was no stranger to first-rate quadraphonic speakers and she merely told him she liked the opera. “It’s far more romantic than
Carmen
, isn’t it? I think, with a few more hearings, I’ll fall in love with it.”

“You’ll have to come over and listen often then. Feel free anytime.”

Feeling a wave of warmth that had nothing to do with her morning in the sun, Willy stammeringly backed out of her gauche remark, but he dismissed her embarrassment with the wave of a hand.

She refused his offer of dinner and afterward wondered why. He hadn’t made any threatening moves, nor was there the slightest indication of wolfish tendencies, although he had allowed his eyes to enjoy openly what she supposed she had presented. She wasn’t unused to being stared at, though, since she had filled out little more than a year or so ago. Still, there was something about the man that made her wary and she decided that in the case of Kiel Faulkner, she’d better tread carefully. Even the name sounded dangerous, she thought, unconsciously comparing him with Randy Collier. Randy had been one thing . . . she had been able to handle him well enough, as unpleasant as it had been; but she had an idea that if she ever found herself in the same position with this man, she’d come out second-best, and the most frightening thing about the idea was that she wasn’t at all sure she’d mind.

Kiel didn’t relinquish his parking place in the shade, nor did Willy expect him to. Even when the sun-baked leather burned the backs of her legs so that she was forced to bring along a towel to sit on, she accepted as perfectly natural the fact that Kiel Faulkner took his place with the other heads of firms, leaving the less-desirable places to the working force of the three office buildings. The fact would have dumbfounded her father.

One day during the middle of the week, an exasperated Pete came in with his five-year-old son in tow. Connie, it seemed, was prostrated with a siege of morning sickness and the girl who usually looked after young Kip had failed to show up.

“I don’t know how much I can get done with his help,” Pete said resignedly, “but it’s a cinch I can’t leave him home while Connie’s out of action. He’d dismantle the place in no time flat. Going to be an engineer, this one.”

Somehow, it evolved that Willy ended up spending the morning playing with the child while she listened for the phone. The others, with the exception of Dotty, who had a batch of rush letters to get out, were all showing properties, and Willy made a new discovery about herself: she had a knack for getting along with children. Or at least with one small boy, with a stubborn streak and unflagging energy.

They played cars, using ashtrays and the box that Dotty’s staples came in, and Kip was delighted with Willy’s ability to vocalize the various engine noises. He was best at horn sounds, himself, and the two of them were thus engaged when Kiel walked in and discovered them on their knees, bottoms up, playing at stock-car racing.

“I wondered just what it was you did over here, Willy, while the real salesmen were out beating the bushes for hot prospects.”

She rolled over on the carpet and sat there dusting off her bare knees as she grinned up at him. “Well, the truth will out. I push boxes around under the desk and RENEGADE PLAYER make noises in the back of my throat. Were you looking for Matt?” Dotty had gone out to lunch early since Willy was there to cover for her.

“No, I came to see if you’d like to go to lunch,” Kiel said, stooping to lift the curious boy and sit him on top of Willy’s littered desk. “What about it, son, you hungry?”

Kip stared solemnly at the impressive stranger and finally nodded his head silently.

“I had planned to wait until Dotty got back,” Willy told him, “but I don’t suppose it matters all that much. If anyone calls and we’re not here, they’ll call back if it’s important.”

“You must be a valuable addition to the firm,” Kiel gibed, extending her a hand.

“Well, to tell the truth, things aren’t all that busy around here lately. I haven’t had a call all morning, and besides, now that you mention food, I’m starving. So’s young Kip here, I’ll bet. Pete said he’d be back in time to take him home for lunch and a nap, but something probably came up.”

They went to a seafood sandwich place nearby and Willy tried to think what a five-year-old might enjoy, only to have the matter taken out of her hands when Kiel ordered without bothering to consult anyone.

“So,” he said over soft-shell crab sandwiches, with milk for Willy and Kip and beer for himself, “as well as being charmingly domestic, you’re touchingly maternal. Are you looking forward to settling down and raising a brood of your own as soon as you can find someone to support them all?”

Puzzled by a strange note of mockery underlying his teasing, she nevertheless answered him seriously. “I don’t know the first thing about children. Kip is the first one I’ve ever met at close range, but if he’s any example, I’d say I enjoy them. At least we seem to have a few interests in common.”

Kiel laughed at this, and Willy watched, fascinated at the play of muscles under the tanned skin at the throat of his open-necked shirt. The tension eased and she thought she must have imagined the sarcasm. They finished off with coffee for the adults and a small ice cream for Kip, and Kiel wondered aloud if Willy had to forgo all desserts in order not to pop any more buttons off her jeans.

“Certainly not,” she admitted ruefully. “I don’t have all that much self-discipline. I was a bean pole up until a year or so ago, when I finally started filling out a little.” She ignored his look of patent disbelief. “Something to do with my metabolism, I guess. I can eat voraciously and all it does is make me sleepy.”

“I’d have said your metabolism was set at slow idle, but then, maybe I only see you at your gluttonous worst. You probably starve yourself between dinner dates,” he teased.

Whatever answer she might have made was forestalled when Kip climbed drowsily into her lap, managing to smear chocolate on her blouse and spill her purse on the floor. She smiled indulgently at the child and allowed Kiel to gather up her belongings, and then he took the boy from her and carried him out to the car, where he settled him on her lap again for the short drive back to the office.

Pete turned into the parking lot behind them and Willy introduced the two men, handing over the querulous child to his father.

“Call me again when you get hungry,” Kiel gibed, leaving her on the divided ramp that led to the two offices, and she went inside to hear the strident summons of the telephone, which more than made up for its morning silence during the rest of the afternoon.

Willy sold a forty-seven-year-old house at Coinjock that had been on her list of the ten least likely to sell and was given a new condominium, as well as a dilapidated rental house that was threatened by every high tide. She took what came her way, did her easygoing best, which usually happened to be as good as, if not better than, that of the other two agents and Matt; and when her commissions added up to her monthly rental plus a reasonable amount left over for running expenses, she was satisfied. She had found out early in life that money brought with it its own attendant problems, and as long as she had enough to eat and a place to sleep, she’d be perfectly happy. As for clothes, she had enough to last her for the time being, especially since she lived in casual skirts and jeans, plus the occasional long cotton gown for more festive evenings; when winter rolled around, she’d get the rest of her things out of storage and try not to be embarrassed by her father’s ostentatious idea of suitable winter coats for a young woman.

Saturday was drizzly and sleepy, the sort of soft, gray weather she loved along the beach strand. She slept late and then spent several hours rereading her favorite nineteenth-century ghost stories, and she was about to doze off again when Kiel appeared at her door with his measuring cup and a beguiling light in his dark eyes. She had tried to determine if those eyes were actually black or just a very dark shade of brown and had finally concluded that they were a metallic shade of gray, allowing a viewer no insight at all into the mind of the man behind them.

“What are you begging this time?” She laughed, laying aside her book.

“Any wheat germ?”

“You’re kidding!” she exclaimed, getting to her feet in one easy, fluid motion.

“Scout’s honor. Read a healthy junk-food recipe calling for honey, peanut butter, wheat germ and stale whole-wheat bread, and I thought this looked like a perfect day to try it.”

They collaborated on that one for the next few hours and laughed together when it turned out to be messier than either of them would have believed possible. Kiel sat on one of his cane-topped barstools, thighs spread and elbows propped on the counter as he watched Willy deal with the stack of messy utensils; and it was then, when she stood there helplessly, her hand sticky with honey, that the tenor of the afternoon changed from an easygoing compatibility of two people with mutual interests to something infinitely more interesting and far more dangerous.