Keeping Company (24 page)

Who needed pregnancy anyway? Nausea and swelling body parts she could get from one good helping of lobster Newburg.

Lindy Kincaid crawled out from under the porch with dirt on her pink overalls and leaves clinging to her rusty-gold curls. The four-year-old scrambled up the porch steps, her dark eyes shining and a delighted smile on her pixie face. Alaina had to quell the urge to scoop the child up and run off with her.

“Mama!” Lindy called excitedly. “There’s kitties under here! Come see!”

I’m doomed
, Alaina thought morosely as she fell in line behind her friends. Lindy led the way down the steps, then crouched down in the impossible way of children and pointed under the porch. Sure enough, there lay Julia looking smug and superior as three parti-colored kittens nursed at her side.

“That does it,” Alaina mumbled fatalistically.
She sat down on the porch steps with a
thump
, bracing her elbows on her knees and plunking her head in her hands.

Since Dylan’s departure from her life—no, since before Dylan’s departure; hell, all her life—she’d been telling herself she didn’t need a family, that she didn’t want a man in her life, that she could rely on no one but herself. And all the while on a deeper level, a level where a lonely little girl had grown into a lonely woman, she had always longed for just those things. Now they had been within her grasp and had slipped away. Or had they been snatched away? Or had she pushed them away?

What did it matter? The dream had eluded her and life was taunting her with her failure. Faith was getting married. Faith had a beautiful daughter and a baby on the way. Even the damn cat had a family!

The telephone rang, and Alaina hauled herself onto the porch and snatched up the cordless receiver from the wicker table. She yanked out the phone’s antenna and growled into the mouthpiece, “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

The polished voice that sailed over the lines set her teeth on edge. “Alaina, darling, it’s Helene. Your mother. Wonderful news, dear. I’m getting married again!”

Without a word, Alaina took the phone from her ear and dropped it into the pitcher of orange juice sitting on the breakfast tray. Faith and Jayne stared at her, biting their lips.

“I’m going for a walk,” she announced, descending the steps like a queen. “If I never come back, you may divide my possessions equally among yourselves and run over Dylan Harrison with my car.”

“Marlene mentioned the two of you had a little tiff,” Jayne said. She nibbled nervously on a purple-polished fingernail. “You’re really mad at him, huh?”

“Mad?” she questioned softly. “He roped me into an alleged no-strings relationship, made me fall in love with him, then decided I was just too ambitious and materialistic for his pious, reformed tastes.”

Jayne winced.

Alaina pressed on, lifting a slender finger to
emphasize her point. “You know, if there’s one thing I hate even more than a reformed smoker, it’s a reformed yuppie. Dylan Harrison is a pompous, self-righteous hypocrite. He’s a conniving con man and a welsher. I hope all his hair falls out. I hope his teeth turn black, and his neighbors raze their house, pour asphalt on the lawn, and open a Kmart. Does that answer your question?”

“In spades.”

Alaina crossed her arms in front of her defensively. “Well? Aren’t you going to say it? Aren’t you going to say I told you so?” Lord knew she’d been waiting to hear it. She’d thought she was so darn smart cooking up this scheme with Dylan to get out of all those wretched blind dates Jayne and Marlene had pushed her into. They’d crowed all along about incompatibility. So why weren’t they crowing now? “Well?”

Jayne looked distinctly uneasy. In fact, she looked downright guilty. “Umm … can I plead the Fifth Amendment?”

“Jayne.” Faith planted her hands on her hips and gave their flaky friend her sternest mother look. “What have you done?”

“I just thought you two were so right for each other!” Jayne wailed, turning beseeching eyes on Alaina.

Alaina’s jaw dropped so that she nearly impaled it on the point of the Crystal pin she was wearing at the throat of her burgundy blouse. “You what?! No, don’t tell me,” she demanded, holding up a hand to ward off Jayne’s explanation. “You were matchmaking. You made me go out with all those dorks just so I’d think Dylan was a prize. You’re Marlene’s apprentice wizard or something.”

“I just wanted you and Dylan to be happy. I’ve never known two people more alike. Oh, I know y’all have different taste in clothes and things, but deep down you’re both stubborn and opinionated and smart and dedicated”—Jayne’s night-dark eyes filled with tears—“and lonely.”

Alaina stepped back as if she’d been slapped. Her face paled to the color of parchment. Jayne had set her up because she thought she was lonely. Lord, had she really sunk to this? Pity from one of her dearest friends.

“I think I’ll take that walk now,” she whispered, and turned away.

Jayne bit her lip and sniffled as she watched Alaina pause halfway down the sidewalk to collect her mail from the mailman. “You don’t think she’ll do anything crazy, do you?”

Faith stared after their friend as well, her expression sad and sympathetic. “No. Alaina’s tough. Besides, she’d never do anything to ruin her outfit—it’s Ralph Lauren.”

She sat on the beach, just out of reach of the waves. Gulls swooped and called overhead. Farther up the sand, people gathered in knots of two or three, enjoying the last of the warm weather, laughing and talking and soaking up the Saturday-morning sun. But Alaina sat alone, apart, as she had always been. The shield of separateness she’d developed so long ago still surrounded her, keeping people out, keeping her safe.

No. That was a lie. It hadn’t kept her safe from Dylan. He’d barged into her life like a whirlwind. He’d touched her and he’d hurt her and damned
if she didn’t still love him. Brother, that ticked her off. She’d been ready to give her heart to him on a platter. She’d been ready to sign up for cooking lessons. And what had he done? Jumped to the conclusion that she would take a partnership at Victor-Ruthton over a partnership with him.

Maybe his first wife would have made that choice, maybe it was his first wife’s love for things that had frightened him into dumping her. But she wasn’t Veronica Howard. She was Alaina Montgomery, and she loved
him
, the boneheaded man. She liked her career and her clothes and her BMW, but she
loved
Dylan Harrison. She’d never gotten the chance to tell him. She’d never taken a chance and told him.

Why quibble over wording now? It was too late. She was too hurt and too proud to go crawling back to him, and he was too stubborn and too pigheaded to come crawling back to her. She had lost him. Lord, how she hated losing!

To distract herself, she picked up her mail and shuffled through it. There was the usual assortment of bills and charity requests. At the bottom of the pile was a packet postmarked Scotland.
Knowing it would be from Bryan Hennessy, she tore the envelope open and extracted a paperback book that had seen better days.
Tales of the Kalamari
by Frank D. Richard. On the cover was an artist’s rendering of the Crystal pin she wore, bursting with color. Beneath it was an excerpt: “If your heart is pure and your desire strong, the Crystal can make your dreams come true. Believe.”

Inside the cover Bryan had jotted a message in pencil:
Somewhere out there is a rainbow with your name on it. Believe. Love, Bryan.

“I don’t think so, friend,” Alaina whispered as she stood up and unpinned the Crystal from her blouse.

She was all through with rainbows. Chasing them left her nothing but exhausted, disillusioned, and soul-weary. She stared down at the prism of glass in her hand for one long last moment, then threw it into the sea.

The surf promptly washed it up at her feet.

Alaina scowled at the pin and picked it up. “Look, you cheap piece of glass, I’ve had it with you and your phony promises. Maybe my heart
isn’t entirely pure, but I sure as hell desired Dylan Harrison, and you didn’t deliver. I ought to sue for breach of contract. I ought to—”

She cut herself off abruptly as wheels started turning in her head. “That’s it,” she whispered, her heart suddenly pounding. “That’s it!”

The Harrison family reunion was an annual affair that moved up and down the Pacific coast from Seattle to San Francisco, depending upon whose turn it was to host the event. Every year Harrisons came from Washington, Oregon, and California, gathering together to eat and talk sports and reminisce and try to marry off the single members of the family.

It was Dylan’s year to host, and it was his year to be singled out as the prime male ripe for matrimony. By noon he’d lost track of the female friends of cousins who had been paraded before him. Once he’d sought refuge in a game of touch football with his brothers, only to be tackled by a gang of eligible ladies. It was embarrassing. It was depressing.

Alaina was the woman he wanted. She was the one he had intended to introduce to all his matchmaking aunts. He missed her. He was downright miserable not having her around to spar with and tease. He hadn’t had a wink of sleep since their fight because he’d been lying awake all night, aching to hold her. She was the last woman he should have wanted. She was the only woman his heart desired. And it was over between them. He’d seen to that. In the face of a challenge where she might have chosen him over her career, he’d jumped right in there and given her a great big shove out of his life.

He sat on a little sand dune a few feet away from the main crowd, having successfully snuck away for a moment of peace and self-pity. There were Harrisons all over the beach, all of them having a disgustingly good time. Even Mrs. Pepoon looked animated as she explained to his Aunt Ruth how to use common household spray starch to style hair into a proper beehive.

Cori wandered up the sand dune and plopped down on his lap, looking up at him with big, somber brown eyes. “I’m sad.”

Dylan brushed her bangs back with a gentle hand. “What are you sad about?”

“I’m sad ’cause you’re sad.”

He wrapped his arms around his little girl and hugged her, thankful to have such wonderful children and the time to love them.

Sam jogged up and stopped in front of them, his expression even more serious than usual. Two of his young cousins lingered a few feet behind him, wide-eyed as they stared at Dylan.

“Dad, will Cori and I be able to visit you during your unfortunate incarceration in the penitentiary?”

“They call it the slammer,” cousin Mickey whispered to cousin Greg.

Greg looked sideways at Dylan. “What did he do, off somebody? Maybe he’s going undercover. I saw that on
Wiseguy
. Think they’ll put him in solitary confinement?”

“The box,” Mickey murmured, moon-eyed.

“Prison?” Dylan’s brows drew together as he stared at the boys. “I’m not going to prison.”

“We’ll just see about that, bub.” Deputy Skreawupp hooked his thumbs behind his belt
buckle and glared down at Dylan, his eyes narrowed to beady little slits in his fleshy face. “You’re in big trouble, and if you try anything, I’ll tear you up like a wet newspaper.”

Dylan set Cori down and pushed himself to his feet, brushing sand from the seat of his jeans. “What’s this all about?”

“Breach of contract,” Alaina announced, stepping around the deputy. She wore her glasses and a stylish gray suit and carried a sheaf of papers in one hand and her Gucci pumps in the other. She’d pulled her hair back and secured it at the nape of her neck, but the sea breeze had already pulled tendrils loose and brushed them around her face.

Dylan stared at her, torn between joy and fury. What was she up to? Was she so steamed at him she’d really sic the law on him for that lousy twenty-dollar fine? Or was this about something else altogether?

Alaina swallowed back a major lump of nerves as she looked up at Dylan. What if she was way off base, and he just plain didn’t want her hanging around? What if she was right, and he was as in love with her as she was with him? It seemed well
worth risking humiliation in front of a hundred and fifty Harrisons to find out. The entire clan had gathered around to witness the confrontation. She’d never dreamed there’d be so many of them.

“Breach of contract,” she repeated, dropping her shoes to page through the document she’d brought with her. Scottie the dog dodged through the sea of legs to snatch one suede pump between his teeth. Alaina watched him run off, but made no comment. Turning back to her document, she took a deep breath and plunged in. “This is a written copy of the verbal agreement struck between the accused, Dylan Henry Harrison, and the plaintiff, Alaina N. Montgomery. It clearly states that Mr. Harrison agreed to—indeed instigated—a relationship and has since reneged on that agreement, causing the plaintiff to suffer emotional distress, i.e.”—she cleared her throat and went for broke—“a broken heart.”

Warmth flooded through Dylan like the rays of the sun breaking over the horizon after a long dark night. He’d broken her heart. That had to mean she had committed her heart, that keeping
company had meant more to her than an easy date.

Alaina stole a glance up at him and took hope at the soft shine in his dark eyes. She gulped a breath of air and went on. “Additional charges are: reckless endangerment of the emotions, being a jerk, bombastic pomposity, and jumping to erroneous conclusions.”

Dylan squeezed his eyes shut and cursed himself for being an impulsive reactionary imbecile even though Alaina hadn’t put that on the list. “You weren’t going to take that job at Vicious-Ruthless?”

Pulling her glasses off, she looked up at him with her heart in her eyes. Her low voice was as soft as the sea breeze that carried it to him. “Why would I when everything I ever wanted is right here waiting for me?”

Dylan didn’t see the throng of relatives gathered around them, gawking. He saw only Alaina. Alaina with no shield of sardonic wit, no barrier of cool self-possession. He saw her as he had dreamed of seeing her—with her blue eyes full of
love and hope. He took a step closer and reached out to run his fingertips over her cheek.