“Excuse me, Lorna,” he said, interrupting the woman’s fascinating tales of Missy and Poppet’s love of car rides.
“Don’t stay away so long next time,” she called after him.
He followed Clare and found her looking through a stack of CDs next to the sound system. The light from the torches barely leached through the grasses as she read the titles by the blue LCD light.
“What are you putting on next?” he asked.
“AC/DC.” She glanced up, then returned her gaze to the CD in her hand. “Mother hates ‘racket.’”
Sebastian chuckled and moved behind her. “Shoot To Thrill” would probably spike Joyce’s blood pressure and give her heart failure. While that might be amusing, it would ruin Leo’s party. He looked over Clare’s shoulder at the stack of music. “I haven’t hard Dusty Springfield in years. Why don’t you play that?”
“Fine, party pooper,” Clare said, and picked up Dusty’s CD. “How’d Leo like the fishing pole?”
He’d rather be whipped than admit he hadn’t given it to him yet. “He loved it. Thanks for the wrapping job.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, and Sebastian could hear the laughter in her voice as she popped a CD into the stereo. “You two will have to break it in while you’re here.”
“That’ll have to wait. I’m leaving in the morning. Got to get back to work.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “When will you be back?”
“I don’t know.” After he finished the piece on the black fever outbreak in Rajwara, he was headed to the Arizona border with Mexico to do a follow-up piece on illegals entering the country. After that he was off to New Orleans to write an update on conditions and progress in the Big Easy. At some point he still had to deal with his mother’s estate, but he figured that could wait. There was no rush.
“I noticed Leo’s new Lincoln in the driveway. I guess the old one must have turned fifty.”
“It did. He bought the new Town Car today at a dealership in Nampa,” he said as the delicate scent of her perfume surrounded his head and he felt an urge to lower his face to the side of her neck. “You know a lot about my father.”
“Of course.” She shrugged and one thin strap slid down her arm. “I’ve known him most of my life.” She pushed Play and Dusty Springfield’s lush, soulful voice flowed like a sexy whisper from the speakers. She shook her head and her hair brushed her bare shoulders. Sebastian felt a second, stronger urge to raise his hand and reach for a curl resting against her skin. To feel the texture with his fingers. He took a few steps back, retreating deeper into the darkness. Away from the scent of her neck and the inexplicable compulsion to touch her hair.
“For as long as I can recall, he’s lived in my mother’s backyard,” she continued while Dusty sang about getting a little lovin’ in the morning. She turned and looked up at him through the variegated shadow. “In a lot of ways, I know him better than my own father. I’ve certainly spent more time with him.”
He supposed his insides were getting all tied up in hot knots over Clare because he hadn’t been laid in months. That had to be the reason. With his mother’s funeral and everything else going on, he’d put off his sex life. As soon as he got home, he was going to have to do something about that. “But he’s not your father.”
“Yes. I know.”
A man just shouldn’t put off something like sex. Especially when he wasn’t used to going without. He raised his glass to his lips and polished off his scotch. “As a kid, I used to wonder.”
“If I knew Leo wasn’t my father?” She laughed, a breathy little sound of amusement, and took a step toward him. “Yeah. I knew. The term ‘serial cheater’ was invented for my father. Every time I visited him, he had a new woman. Still does, and he’s seventy.” A shaft of light cut across the darkness and lit up Clare’s cleavage but left her face in inky shadow.
The memory of her naked except for a tiny pink thong flashed in his head and got all mixed and confused with the woman standing in front of him. Desire crawled down his belly and tightened his groin. He pulled his gaze from her cleavage and looked behind him. The very last thing he needed to complicate his life was Clare Wingate.
“He still thinks he’s quite the lady’s man,” she said through a breathy laugh.
He turned and moved a few feet toward a wrought-iron bench sitting beneath a pruned dogwood tree. If it hadn’t been painted white, it would have been undetectable in the darkness. “I don’t even know if my father has a girlfriend or a special woman in his life.” He sat and leaned back against the cool metal.
“He’s had a few. Not many.” Dusty’s soulful voice drifted on the warm night breeze.
“I always wondered if there was anything going on between your mother and my dad.”
Again she gave a breathy little laugh. “Nothing romantic.”
“Because he’s the gardener?”
“Because she’s frigid.”
That he could believe. One more thing mother and daughter did not have in common.
“Aren’t you going to rejoin the party?” she asked.
“Not yet. If I have to listen to Lorna Devers for one more second, I’m afraid I’ll grab one of the torches and set myself on fire.” Mrs. Devers was only one reason he didn’t plan to rejoin that party for a while. The other reason wore a blue and white dress and was stalking him.
“Ouch.” Clare laughed and moved in front of him.
“Believe me, it’ll be less painful than listening to her silly stories about Missy and Poppet.”
“I don’t know who is worse, Lorna or Rich.”
“Her son is an idiot.”
“Rich isn’t her son.” She sat beside him on the bench, and Sebastian gave up, resigned himself to his tormented fate. “He’s her fifth husband.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.” She sat back and the night almost swallowed her. “If I hear my mother tell one more person that I write women’s fiction, I’m afraid I’ll grab one of the torches and set her on fire.”
“What’s wrong with her saying you write women’s fiction?” Moonlight filtered through the dogwood and cut across her nose and mouth. Her fantasy of a mouth that made him wonder if she tasted as good as she looked.
“It’s the reason why she says it. I embarrass her.” The corners of her lips rose in a smile. “Who else should we throw on the pyre? Besides Lorna and my mother?”
He leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. He set his glass on the ground and looked through the darkness before him. He could just see the outline of his father’s house and the porch light above the red door. “Everyone who has taken the time to point out to me that my relationship with my father sucks.”
“Your relationship with Leo does suck. You should try to work on it. He’s not getting any younger.”
He glanced at the hypocrite across the iron bench. “Hello, pot? This is the kettle calling.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“That before you start giving me advice, you should take a good hard look at your relationship with your mother.”
Clare folded her arms beneath her breasts and looked across at the man beside her, the white stripes of his shirt the most visible thing about him. “My mother is an impossible woman.”
“Impossible? If there is one thing I’ve learned over the past few days, it’s that there is always a way to compromise.”
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. She’d given up on compromise years ago. “There is no use trying. I can’t please her. I’ve tried my whole life, and my whole life I’ve disappointed her. I quit the Junior League because I didn’t have the time, and I don’t belong to any other charitable organization anymore. I’m thirty-three, single, and haven’t produced a grandchild. To her, I’m wasting my life away. In fact, the only thing I’ve ever done that she approved of was my engagement to Lonny.”