Ragged Rainbows

“I am happy,” she said. And then she went into the office, closed the door and hurled the storyboards across the room.

“Dinner?”

Ivy was clearly going to stand fast. “Don’t you dare say no, Shay Kendall. You wanted to be free of that house and Todd sold it for you and the least you can do is let us treat you to dinner to celebrate.”

Shay gathered up the last of the invoices she had been checking and put them into the basket on her desk. It had been a difficult day, what with the planning of the commercials and that salesman making his speech on the front lot. Of course, it was a blessing that the house had been sold and she was relieved to be free of the financial burden it had represented, but parting with the place was something of an emotional shock all the same. She would have preferred to spend the evening at home, lounging about with a good book and maybe feeling a little sorry for herself. “Your brother will be there, I suppose.”

“Of course,” Ivy replied with a shrug. “After all, he’s the buyer.”

Shay felt a nip of envy. What would it be like to be able to buy a house like that? For a very long time, she had nursed a secret dream of starting her own catering business and being such a smashing success that she could afford to keep the place for herself and Hank. “I have to stop by Seaview to see Rosamond on my way home,” she said, hoping to avoid having dinner out. “And then, of course, there’s Hank.…”

“Shay.”

She sighed and pushed back her desk chair to stand up. “All right, all right. I’ll spend a few minutes at Seaview and get a sitter for the evening.”

Ivy’s lovely face was alight again. “Great!” she chimed, turning to leave Shay’s office.

“Wait,” Shay said firmly, stopping her friend in the doorway.

Ivy looked back over one shoulder, her pretty hair following the turn of her head in a rhythmic flow of fine gold. “What?”

“Don’t get any ideas about fixing me up with your brother, Ivy, because I’m not interested. Is that clear?”

Ivy rolled her eyes. “Oh, for pity’s sake!” she cried dramatically.

“I mean it, Ivy.”

“Meet us at the Wharf at eight,” Ivy said, and then she waltzed out, closing Shay’s door behind her.

Shay locked her desk, picked up her purse and cast one last disdainful look at the storyboards propped along the back of her bookshelf before leaving. She tried to be happy about the assignment and the money it would bring in, tried to be glad that the elegant house high above the beach was no longer her responsibility, tried to look forward to a marvelous dinner at Skyler Beach’s finest restaurant. But, as she drove toward Seaview Convalescent Home, it was all Shay could do to keep from pulling over to the side of road, dropping her forehead to the steering wheel and crying.

Chapter Two

Shay Kendall looked nothing like her illustrious mother, Mitch thought as he watched her enter the restaurant. No, she was far more beautiful: tall with lush brown hair that fell past her shoulders in gentle tumbles of curl, and her eyes were a blend of green and brown, flecked with gold.

She wore a simple white cotton sundress and high-heeled sandals and when Ivy introduced her and she extended her hand to Mitch, something in her touch crackled up his arm and elbowed his heart. It was a sudden, painful jolt, a Sunday punch, and Mitch was off balance. To cover this, he made a subtle production of drawing back her chair and took his time rounding the table to sit down across from her.

Ivy and Todd, having greeted Shay, were now standing in front of the lobster tank, which ran the length of one wall, eagerly choosing their dinner. Their easy laughter drifted over the muted chatter of the other guests to the table beside the window.

Shay was looking out through the glass; beyond it, spatters of fading daylight danced on an ocean tinted with the pinks and golds and deep lavenders of sunset. Her eyes followed the gulls as they swooped and dived over the water, giving their raucous cries, and a slight smile curved her lips. An overwhelming feeling of tenderness filled Mitch as he watched her.

He had to say something, start a conversation. He sliced one irate glance in Ivy’s direction, feeling deserted, and then plunged in with, “Ivy tells me that the house I bought belonged to your mother.”

The moderation with which Mitch spoke surprised him, considering that he could see the merest hint of rosy nipples through the whispery fabric of Shay’s dress. He took a steadying gulp of the white wine Todd had ordered earlier.

The hazel eyes came reluctantly to his, flickered with pain and then inward laughter at some memory. Mitch imagined Shay as a little girl, playing in that miniature house behind the gazebo, and the picture slowed down his respiration rate.

“Yes.” Her voice was soft and she tossed a wistful glance toward Ivy and Todd, who were still studying their unsuspecting prey at the lobster tanks. In that instant Shay was a woman again, however vulnerable, and Mitch was rocked by the quicksilver change in her.

He tried to transform her back into the child. “That little house in back, was that yours?”

Shay smiled and nodded. “I used to spend hours there. At the time, it was completely furnished, right down to china dishes—” She fell silent and her beautiful eyes strayed again to the water beyond the window. “I only lived there for a few years,” she finished quietly.

Mitch began to wish that he had never seen Rosamond Dallas’s house, let alone bought it. He felt as though he had stolen something precious from this woman and he supposed that, in a way, he had. He was relieved when Ivy and Todd came back to the table, laughing between themselves and holding hands.

He was so handsome.

Nothing Ivy had ever said about Mitch Prescott had prepared Shay for the first jarring sight of him. He was a few inches taller than she was, with broad shoulders and hair of a toasted caramel shade, but it was his eyes that unsettled her the most. They were a deep brown, quick and brazen and tender, all at once. His hands looked strong, and they were dusted with butternut-gold hair, as was the generous expanse of chest revealed by his open-throated white shirt. He had just the suggestion of a beard and the effect was one of quiet, inexorable masculinity.

Here was a man, Shay decided uneasily, who had no self-doubts at all. He was probably arrogant.

She sat up a little straighter and tried to ignore him. His vitality stirred her in a most disturbing way. What would it be like to be caressed by those deft, confident hands?

Shay’s arm trembled a little as she reached out for her wineglass. Fantasies sprang, scary and delicious, into her mind, and she battled them fiercely. God knew, she reminded herself, Eliott Kendall had taught her all she needed or wanted to know about men.

Ivy was chattering as she sat down, her eyes bright with the love she bore Todd Simmons and the excitement of having her adored brother nearby. “Aren’t you going to pick out which lobster you want?” she demanded, looking from Shay to Mitch with good-natured impatience.

“I make it a point,” Mitch said flatly, “never to eat anything I’ve seen groveling on the bottom of a fish tank. I’ll have steak.”

Ivy’s lower lip jutted out prettily and she turned to Shay. “What about you? You’re having lobster, aren’t you?”

Shay grabbed for her menu and hid behind it. Why hadn’t she followed her instincts and stayed home? She should have known she wouldn’t be able to handle this evening, not after the day she’d had. Not after losing—selling the house.

“Shay?” Ivy prodded.

“I’ll have lobster,” Shay conceded, mostly because she couldn’t make sense of the menu. She felt silly. Good Lord, she was twenty-nine years old, self-supporting, the mother of a six-year-old son, and here she was, cowering behind a hunk of plastic-covered paper.

“Well, go choose one then!”

Shay shook her head. “I’ll let the waiter do that,” she said lamely. I’m in no mood to sign a death warrant, she thought. Or the papers that will release that very special house to a stranger.

She lowered the menu and her eyes locked with Mitch Prescott’s thoughtful gaze. She felt as though he’d bared her breasts or something, even though there was nothing objectionable in his regard. Beneath her dress her nipples tightened in response, and she felt a hot flush pool on her cheekbones.

Mitch smiled then, almost imperceptibly, and his eyes—God, she had to be imagining it, she thought—transmitted a quietly confident acknowledgment, not to mention a promise.

A wave of heat passed over Shay, so dizzying that she had to drop her eyes and grip the arms of her chair for a moment. Stop it, she said to herself. You don’t even know this man.

A waiter appeared and, vaguely, Shay heard Todd ordering dinner.

Ivy startled her back to full alertness by announcing, “Shay’s going to be a star. I’ll bet she’ll be so good that Marvin will want her to do all the commercials.”

“Ivy!” Shay protested, embarrassed beyond bearing. Out of the corner of one eye she saw Mitch Prescott’s mouth twitch slightly.

“What’s the big secret?” Ivy complained. “Everybody in western Washington is going to see you anyway. You’ll be famous.”

“Or infamous,” Todd teased, but his eyes were gentle. “How is your mother, Shay?”

Shay didn’t like to discuss Rosamond, but the subject was infinitely preferable to having Ivy leap into a full and mortifying description of the commercials Shay would begin filming the following week, after Marvin and Jeannie departed for faraway places. “She’s about the same,” she said miserably.

The salads arrived and Shay pretended to be ravenous, since no one would expect her to talk with her mouth full of lettuce and house dressing. Mercifully, the conversation shifted to Todd’s dream of building a series of condominiums on a stretch of property south of Skyler Beach.

Throughout dinner, Ivy chattered about her Christmas wedding, and when the plates had been removed, Todd brought out the papers that would transfer ownership of Rosamond’s last grand house to Mitch. Shay signed them with a burning lump in her throat and, when Ivy and Todd went off to the lounge to dance, she moved to make her escape.

“Wait,” Mitch said with gruff tenderness, and though he didn’t touch Shay in any physical way, he restrained her with that one word.

She sank back into her chair, near tears. “I know I haven’t been very good company. I’m sorry.…”

His hand came across the table and his fingers were warm and gentle on Shay’s wrist. A tingling tremor moved through her and she wanted to die because she knew Mitch had felt it and possibly guessed its meaning. “Let me take you home,” he said.

For a moment Shay was tempted to accept, even though she was terrified at the thought of being alone with this particular man. “I have my car,” she managed to say, and inwardly she despaired because she knew she must seem colorless and tongue-tied to Mitch and a part of her wanted very much to impress him.

He rose and pulled back her chair for her, escorted her as far as her elderly brown Toyota on the far side of the parking lot. There were deep grooves in his cheeks when he smiled at Shay’s nervous efforts to open the car door. When she was finally settled behind the steering wheel, Mitch lingered, bending slightly to look through the open window, and there was an expression of bafflement in his eyes. He probably wondered why there were three arthritic French fries, a fast-food carton and one worn-out sneaker resting on the opposite seat.

“I’m sorry, Shay,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“About the house. About the hard time Ivy gave you.”

Shay was surprised to find herself smiling. She started the car and shifted into Reverse; there was hope, after all, of making a dignified exit. “No problem,” she said brightly. “I’m used to Ivy. Enjoy the house.”

Mitch nodded and Shay backed up with a flourish, feeling oddly relieved and even a bit dashing. Oh, for an Isadora Duncan–style scarf to flow dramatically behind her as she swept away! She was her mother’s daughter after all.

She waved at Mitch Prescott and started into the light evening traffic just as the muffler fell off her car, clattering on the asphalt.

Mitch was there instantly, doing his best not to grin. Shay went from wanting to impress him to wanting to slap him across the face. The roar of the engine was deafening; she backed into the parking lot and turned off the ignition.

Without a word, Mitch opened the door and when Shay got out, he took her arm and escorted her toward a shiny foreign status symbol with a sliding sunroof and spoked wheels. The muffler wouldn’t dare fall off this car.

“Where do you live?” Mitch asked reasonably.

Shay muttered directions, unable to look at him. Damn. First he’d seen her old car virtually fall apart before his eyes and now he was going to see her rented house with its sagging stoop and peeling paint. The grass out front needed cutting and the mailbox leaned to one side and the picture windows, out of keeping with the pre–World War II design, gave the place a look of wide-eyed surprise.

By the time Mitch’s sleek car came to a stop in front of Shay’s house, it was dark enough to cover major flaws. The screen door flew open and Hank burst into the glow of the porchlight, his teenage babysitter, Sally, behind him.

“Mom!” he whooped, bounding down the front walk on bare feet. “Wow! That’s some awesome car!”

Shay was smiling again; her son had a way of putting things into perspective. Sagging stoop be damned. She was rich because she had Hank.

She turned to Mitch, opening her own door as she did so, and put down a foolish urge to invite him inside. “Good night, Mr. Prescott, and thank you.”

He inclined his head slightly in answer and Shay felt an incomprehensible yearning to be kissed. She got out of the car and cut Hank off at the gate.

“Who was that?” the little boy wanted to know.

Shay ruffled his red-brown hair with one hand and ushered him back down the walk. “The man who bought Rosamond’s house.”

“Uncle Garrett called,” Hank announced when they were inside.

Shay paid the babysitter, kicked off her high-heeled sandals and sank onto her scratchy garage-sale couch. Garrett Thompson had been her stepbrother, during Rosamond’s Nashville phase, and though Shay rarely saw him, their relationship was a close one.

Hank was dancing from one foot to the other, obviously ready to burst. “Uncle Garrett called!” he repeated.

“Did he want me to call him back?” Shay asked, resting her feet on the coffee table with a sigh of relief.

Hank shook his head. “He’s coming here. He bought a house you can drive and he’s going fishing and he wants me to go, too!”

Shay frowned. “A house—oh. You mean a motor home.”

“Yeah. Can I go with him, Mom? Please?”

“That depends, tiger. Maggie and the kids will be going, too, I suppose?”

Hank nodded and Shay felt a pang at his eagerness, even though she understood. He was a little boy, after all, and he needed masculine companionship. He adored Garrett and the feeling appeared to be mutual. “We’d be gone a whole month.”

Shay closed her eyes. “We’ll talk about this tomorrow, Hank,” she said. “I’ve had a long day and I’m too tired to make any decisions.”

Anxious to stay in his mother’s good graces, Hank got ready for bed without being told. Shay went into his room and gave his freckled forehead a kiss. When he protested, she tickled him into a spate of sleepy giggles.

“I love you,” she said moments later, from his doorway.

“Ah, Mom,” he complained.

Smiling, Shay closed the door and went into her own room for baby-doll pajamas and a robe. After taking a quick bath and brushing her teeth, she was ready for bed.

She was not, however, ready for the heated fantasies that awaited her there, in that empty expanse of smooth sheets. She fell asleep imagining the weight of Mitch Prescott’s body resting upon her own.

The next day was calm compared to the one before it. Shay’s car had been brought to Reese Motors and repaired and she left work early in order to spend an hour with her mother before going home.

Rosamond sat near a broad window overlooking much of Skyler Beach, her thin, graceful hands folded in her lap, her long hair a stream of glistening, gray-marbled ebony tumbling down her back. On her lap she held the large rag doll Shay had bought for her six months before, when Rosamond had taken to wandering the halls of the convalescent home, day and night, sobbing that she’d lost her baby—couldn’t someone please help her find her baby?

She had seemed content with the doll and even now she would clutch it close if anyone so much as glanced at it with interest, but Rosamond no longer cried or questioned or walked the halls. She was trapped inside herself forever, and there was no knowing whether or not she understood anything that happened around her.

On the off chance that some part of Rosamond was still aware, Shay visited often and talked to her mother as though nothing had changed between them. She told funny stories about Marvin and his crazy commercials and about the salesmen and about Hank.

Today there were no stories Shay wanted to tell, and she couldn’t bring herself to mention that the beautiful house beside the sea, with its playhouse and its gazebo and its gardens of pastel rhododendrons, had been sold.

She stepped over the threshold of her mother’s pleasant room and let the door whisk shut behind her, blessing Garrett’s father, Riley Thompson, for being willing to pay Seaview’s hefty rates. It was generous of him, considering that he and Rosamond had been divorced for some fifteen years.

“Hello, Mother,” she said quietly.

Rosamond looked up with a familiar expression of bafflement in her wide eyes and held the doll close. She began to rock in her small cushioned chair.

Shay crossed the room and sank into another chair, facing Rosamond’s. There was no resemblance between the two women; Rosamond’s hair was raven-black, though streaked with gray now, and her eyes were violet, while Shay’s were hazel and her hair was merely brown. As a child Shay had longed to be transformed into a mirror image of her mother.

“Mother?” she prompted, hating the silence.

Rosamond hugged the doll and rocked faster.

Shay worked up a shaky smile and her voice had a falsely bright note when she spoke again. “It’s almost dinnertime. Are you getting hungry?”

There was no answer, of course. There never was. Shay talked until she could bear the sound of her own voice no longer and then kissed her mother’s papery forehead and left.

The box, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk in front of Shay Kendall’s house, was enormous. The name of a local appliance store was imprinted on one side and, as Mitch approached, he saw the crooked coin slot and the intriguing words, Lemmonad, Ten Sens, finger-painted above a square opening. He grinned and produced two nickels from the pocket of his jeans, dropping them through the slot.

They clinked on the sidewalk. The box jiggled a bit, curious sounds came from inside, and then a small freckled hand jutted out through the larger opening, clutching a grubby paper cup filled with lemonade.

Mitch chuckled, crouching as he accepted the cup. “How’s business?”

“Vending machines don’t talk, mister,” replied the box.

Some poor mosquito had met his fate in the lemonade and Mitch tried to be subtle about pouring the stuff into the gutter behind him. “Is your mother home?” he asked.

“No,” came the cardboard-muffled answer. “But my babysitter is here. She’s putting gunk on her toenails.”

“I see.”

A face appeared where the cup of lemonade had been dispensed. “Are you the guy who brought my mom home last night?”

“Yep.” Mitch extended a hand, which was immediately clasped by a smaller, stickier one. “My name is Mitch Prescott. What’s yours?”

“Hank Kendall. Really, my name is Henry. Who’d want people callin’ ’em Henry?”

“Who indeed?” Mitch countered, biting back another grin. “Think your mom will be home soon?”

The face filling the gap in the cardboard moved in a nod. “She visits Rosamond after work sometimes. Rosamond is weird.”

“Oh? How so?”

“You’re not a kidnapper or anything, are you? Mom says I’m not supposed to talk to strangers. Not ever.”

“And she’s right. In this case, it’s safe, because I’m not a kidnapper, but, as a general rule—”

The box jiggled again and then toppled to one side, revealing a skinny little boy dressed in blue shorts and a T-shirt, along with a pitcher of lemonade and a stack of paper cups. “Rosamond doesn’t talk or anything, and sometimes she sits on my mom’s lap, just like I used to do when I was a little kid.”

Mitch was touched. He sighed as he stood upright again. Before he could think of anything to say in reply, the screen door snapped open and the babysitter was mincing down the walk, trying not to spoil her mulberry toenails. At almost the same moment, Shay’s Toyota wheezed to a stop behind Mitch’s car.

He wished he had an excuse for being there. What the hell was he going to say to explain it? That he’d been awake all night and miserable all day because he wanted Shay Kendall in a way he had never before wanted any woman?

Mitch was wearing jeans and a dark blue sports shirt and the sight of him almost made Shay drop the bucket of take-out chicken she carried in the curve of one arm. Go away, go away, she thought. “Would you like to stay to dinner?” she asked aloud.

He looked inordinately relieved. “Sounds good,” he said.

Sally wobbled, toes upturned, over to stand beside Shay. “Who’s the hunk?” she asked in a stage whisper that sent color pulsing into her employer’s face.

Shay stumbled through an introduction and was glad when Sally left for the day. Mitch watched her move down the sidewalk to her own gate with a grin. “I hope her toenails dry before the bones in her feet are permanently affected,” he said.

“Dumb girl,” Hank added, who secretly adored Sally.

The telephone was ringing as Shay led the way up the walk; Hank surged around her and bounded into the house to grab the receiver and shout, “Hello!”

“Why are you here?” Shay asked softly as Mitch opened the screen door for her.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

Hank was literally jumping up and down, holding the receiver out to Shay. “It’s Uncle Garrett! It’s Uncle Garrett!”

Shay smiled at the exuberance in her son’s face, though it stung just a little, and handed the bucket of chicken to Mitch so that she could accept the call.

“Hi, Amazon,” Garrett greeted her. “What’s the latest?”

Shay was reassured by the familiar voice, even if it was coming from hundreds of miles away. The teasing nickname, conferred upon Shay during the adolescent years when she had been taller than Garrett, was welcome, too. “You don’t want to know,” she answered, thinking of the upcoming commercials and the attraction she felt toward the man standing behind her with a bucket of chicken in his arms.

Garrett laughed. “Yes, I do, but I’ll get it out of you later. Right now, I want to find out if Maggie and I can borrow Hank for a month.”

Shay swallowed hard. “A month?”

“Come on, mother hen. He needs to spend time with me, and you know it.”

“But…a month.”

“We’ve got big stuff planned, Shay. Camping. Fishing.” There was a brief pause. “And two weeks at Dad’s ranch.”

Shay was fond of Riley Thompson; of all her six stepfathers, he had been the only one who hadn’t seemed to regard her as an intruder. “How is Riley?”

“Great,” Garrett answered. “You’ve heard his new hit, I assume. He’s got a string of concerts booked and there’s talk that he’ll be nominated for another Grammy this year. You wouldn’t mind, would you, Shay, our taking Hank to his place, I mean? Dad wants to get to know him.”