Ragged Rainbows

“Why?”

“Because he’s your kid, Amazon.”

Shay felt sad, remembering how empty that big beautiful house overlooking the sea had been after Riley and Garrett had moved out. Everyone knew that the divorce had nearly destroyed Riley; he’d loved Rosamond and chances were that he loved her still. “I want you to tell him, for me, how much I appreciate all he’s done for my mother. God knows what kind of place she’d have to stay in if he weren’t paying the bills.”

“Shay, if you need money—”

Shay could hear Hank and Mitch in the kitchen. It sounded as though they were setting the table, and Hank was chattering about his beloved Uncle Garrett, who had a house that could be “drived” just like a car.

“I don’t need money,” she whispered into the phone. “Don’t you dare offer!”

Garrett sighed. “All right, all right. Maggie wants to talk to you.”

Garrett’s wife came on the line then; she was an Australian and Shay loved the sound of her voice. By the time the conversation was over, she had agreed to let Hank spend the next four weeks with the Thompsons and their two children.

She hung up, dashed away tears she could not have explained, and wandered into the kitchen, expecting to find Mitch and Hank waiting for her. The small table was clear.

“Out here, Mom!” Hank called.

Shay followed the voice onto the small patio in back. The chicken and potato salad and coleslaw had been set out on the sturdy little picnic table left behind by the last tenant, along with plates and silverware and glasses of milk.

“Do I get to go?” Hank’s voice was small and breathless with hope.

Shay took her seat on the bench beside Mitch, because that was the way the table had been set, and smiled at her son. “Yes, you get to go,” she answered, and the words came out hoarsely.

Hank gave a whoop of delight and then was too excited to eat. He begged to be excused so that he could go and tell his best friend, Louie, all about the forthcoming adventure.

The moment he was gone, Shay dissolved in tears. She was amazed at herself—she had not expected to cry—and still more amazed that Mitch Prescott drew her so easily into his arms and held her. There she was, blubbering all over his fancy blue sports shirt like a fool, and all he did was tangle one gentle hand in her hair and rock her back and forth.

It had been a very long time since Shay had had a shoulder to cry on, and humiliating as it was, silly as it was, it was a sweet indulgence.

Chapter Three

“Tell me about Shay Kendall,” Mitch said evenly, and his hand trembled a little as he poured coffee from the restaurant carafe into Ivy’s cup.

Ivy grinned and lifted the steaming brew to her lips. “Are you this subtle with stool pigeons and talkative members of the Klan?”

“Dammit,” Mitch retorted with terse impatience, “don’t say things like that.”

“Sorry,” Ivy whispered, her eyes sparkling.

Mitch sat back in the vinyl booth. The small downtown restaurant was full of office workers and housewives with loud little kids demanding ice cream; after a second night in that cavernous house of his, he found the hubbub refreshing. “I asked about Ms. Kendall.”

Ivy shrugged. “Very nice person. Terrific mother. Good office manager. Didn’t you find out anything last night? You said you had dinner with Shay.”

Mitch’s jaw tightened, relaxed again. “She was married,” he prompted.

Ivy looked very uncomfortable. “That was a long time ago. I’ve never met the guy.”

Mitch sipped his coffee in a leisurely way and took his time before saying, “But you know all about him, don’t you? You’re Shay’s friend.”

“Her best friend,” Ivy confirmed with an element of pride that said a great deal about Shay all by itself. A second later her blue eyes shifted from Mitch’s face to the sidewalk just on the other side of the window and her shoulders slumped a little. “I don’t like talking about Shay’s private life. It seems…it seems disloyal.”

He sighed. “I suppose it is,” he agreed.

Ivy’s eyes widened as a waitress arrived with club sandwiches, set the plates down and left. “Mitch, you wouldn’t—you’re not planning to write a book about Rosamond Dallas, are you?”

Mitch recalled his telephone conversation with his agent that morning and sorely regretted mentioning that the house he’d just bought had once belonged to the movie star. Ivan had jumped right on that bit of information, reminding Mitch that he was under contract for one more book and pointing out that a biography of Ms. Dallas, authorized or not, would sell faster than the presses could turn out new copies.

He braced both arms against the edge of the table and leaned toward his sister, glaring. “Why would I, a mild-mannered venture capitalist, want to write a book?”

Ivy was subdued by the reprimand, but her eyes were suspicious. “Okay, okay, I shouldn’t have put it quite that way.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Are you writing about Shay’s mother or not?”

Mitch rolled his eyes. “Dammit, I don’t know,” he lied. The truth was that he had already agreed to do the book. Rosamond Dallas’s whereabouts, long a mystery to the world in general, were now known, thanks to the thoughtless remark he’d made to Ivan. Mitch knew without being told that if he didn’t undertake the project, his agent would send another writer to do it, and unless he missed his guess, that writer would be Lucetta White, a barracuda in Gucci.

Lucetta was no lover of truth, and she made it a practice to ruin at least three careers and a marriage every day before breakfast, just to stay in top form. If she got hold of Rosamond’s story, the result would be a vicious disaster of a book that would ride the major best-seller lists for months.

“Shay’s husband was a coach or a teacher or something,” Ivy said, jolting Mitch back to reality. “He was a lot older than she was, too. Anyway, he embezzled a small fortune from a high school in Cedar Landing, that’s a little place just over the state line, in Oregon.”

“And?”

“And Shay was pregnant at the time. She found out at her baby shower, if you can believe it. Somebody just walked in and said, ‘guess what?’”

“My God.”

“There was another woman involved, naturally.”

Mitch was making mental notes; he would wait until later to ask his sister what had prompted her to divulge all this information. For the moment, he didn’t want to chance breaking the flow. “Does anybody know where they are, Shay’s ex-husband and this woman, I mean?”

Ivy shrugged. “Nobody cares except the police. Shay received divorce papers from somewhere in Mexico a few weeks after he left, but that was over six years ago. The creep could be anyplace by now.”

“Who was the other woman?”

“Are you ready for this? It was the local librarian. Everybody thought she was so prim and proper and she turned out to be a mud wrestler at heart.”

If it hadn’t been for an aching sense of the humiliation Shay must have suffered over the incident, Mitch would have laughed at Ivy’s description of the librarian. “Appearances are deceiving,” he said.

“Are they, Mitch?” Ivy countered immediately. “I hope not, because when I look at you, I see a person I can trust.”

“Why did you tell me about Shay’s past, Ivy? You were dead set against it a minute ago.”

Ivy lifted her chin and began methodically removing frilled toothpicks from the sections of her sandwich. “I just thought you should know why she’s…why she’s shy.”

Mitch wondered if “shy” was the proper word to describe Shay Kendall. Even though she’d wept in his arms the night before, on the bench of a rickety backyard picnic table, he sensed that she had a steel core. She was clearly a survivor. Hadn’t she picked herself up after what must have been a devastating blow, found herself a good job, supported herself and her son? “Didn’t Rosamond do anything to help Shay after Kendall took off with his mud wrestler?”

Ivy stopped chewing and swallowed, her eyes snapping. “She didn’t lift a finger. Shay makes excuses for her, but I think the illustrious Ms. Dallas must have been an egotistical, self-centered bitch.”

Mitch considered that a distinct possibility, but he decided to reserve judgment until he had the facts.

After they had eaten their club sandwiches, Mitch drove his sister back to Reese Motors and her job. One hand on the inside handle of the car door, she gazed at her brother with wide, frightened eyes. “All those things in your books, Mitch—did you really know all those terrible people?”

He had hedged enough for one day, he decided. “Yes. And unless you want all those ‘terrible people’ to find out who and where I am, you’d better learn to be a little more discreet.”

Tears sparkled in Ivy’s eyes and shimmered on her lower lashes. “If anything happened to you—”

“Nothing is going to happen to me.” How many times had he said that to Reba, his ex-wife? In the end, words hadn’t been enough; she hadn’t been able to live with the fears that haunted her. The divorce had at least been amicable; Reba was married again now, to a chiropractor with a flourishing practice and a suitably predictable lifestyle. He made a mental note to call and ask her to let Kelly come to visit for a few weeks.

Ivy didn’t look reassured, but she did reach over and plant a hasty kiss on Mitch’s cheek. A moment later she was scampering toward the entrance to the main showroom.

Mitch went shopping. He bought extra telephones in one store, pencils and spiral notebooks in another, steak and the makings of a salad in still another. He reflected, on his way home, that it might be time to get married again. He didn’t mind cooking, but he sure as hell hated eating alone.

Shay carried a bag of groceries and several sacks containing new clothes for Hank’s trip with Garrett and Maggie. She resisted an urge to kiss the top of her son’s head after setting her purchases down on the kitchen table.

“How was work?” he asked, crawling onto a stool beside the breakfast bar that had, like the picture windows in the living room, been something of an architectural afterthought.

Shay groaned and rolled her eyes. “I spent most of it being fitted for costumes.”

Hank was swinging his bare feet back and forth and there was an angry-looking mosquito bite on his right knee. “Costumes? What do you need costumes for? Halloween?”

Shay brought a dozen eggs, a pound of bacon and other miscellaneous items from the grocery bag. “Something similar, I’m afraid,” she said ruefully. “I’m going to be doing four commercials.”

Hank’s feet stopped swinging and his brown eyes grew very wide. “You mean the kind of commercials Mr. Reese does? On TV?”

“Of course, on TV,” Shay answered somewhat shortly. “Mr. and Mrs. Reese are going to be away, so I’ll have to take Mr. Reese’s place.”

“Wow,” Hank crowed, drawing the word out, his eyes shining with admiration. “Everybody will see you and know you’re my mom! I betcha I could get a quarter for your autograph!”

A feeling of sadness washed over Shay; she recalled how people had waited for hours to ask Rosamond for her autograph. She had signed with a loopy flourish, Rosamond had, so friendly, so full of life, so certain of her place in a bright constellation of stars. Did that same vibrant woman exist somewhere inside the Rosamond of today?

“You’re thinking about your mom, aren’t you?” Hank wanted to know.

“Yes.”

“Sally’s mother says you should write a book about Rosamond. If you did, we’d be rich.”

Shay took a casserole prepared on one of her marathon cooking days from the small chest freezer in one corner of the kitchen and slid it into the oven. She’d been approached with the idea of a book before, and she hated it. Telling Rosamond’s most intimate secrets to the world would be a betrayal of sorts, a form of exploitation, and besides, she was no writer. “Scratch that plan, tiger,” she said tightly. “There isn’t going to be a book and we’re not going to be rich.”

“Uncle Garrett is rich.”

“Uncle Garrett is the son of a world-famous country and western singer and a successful businessman in his own right,” Shay pointed out.

“Rosamond was famous. How come you’re not rich?”

“Because I’m not. Set the table, please.”

“Sally’s mother says she had a whole lot of husbands. Which one was your dad, Mom? You never talk about your dad.”

Shay made a production of washing her hands at the sink, keeping her back to Hank. How could she explain that her father had never been Rosamond’s husband at all, that he’d been the proverbial boy back home, left behind when stardom beckoned? “I didn’t know my father,” she said over the sound of running water. In point of fact, she didn’t even know his name.

Hank was busily setting out plates and silverware and plastic tumblers. “I guess we’re alike that way, huh, Mom?”

Shay’s eyes burned with sudden tears and she cursed Eliott Kendall for never caring enough to call or write and ask about his own son. “I guess so.”

“I like that guy with the blue car.”

Mitch. Shay found herself smiling. She sniffled and turned to face Hank. “I like him, too.”

“Are you going to go out with him, on dates and stuff?”

“I don’t know,” Shay said, unsettled again. “Hey, it’ll be a while until dinner is ready. How about trying on some of this stuff I bought for your camping trip? Maggie and Garrett will be here Saturday, so if I have to make any exchanges, I’d like to take care of it tonight.”

The telephone rang as Shay was slicing cucumbers for a salad, and there was a peculiar jiggling in the pit of her stomach as she reached out one hand for the receiver. She hoped that the caller would be Mitch Prescott and then, at the nervous catching of her breath in her throat, hoped not.

“Shay?” The feminine voice rang like crystal chimes over the wires. “This is Jeannie Reese.”

Mingled relief and disappointment made Shay’s knees weak; she reached out with one foot for a stool and drew it near enough to sit upon. With the telephone receiver wedged between her ear and her shoulder, she went on slicing. “All ready for the big trip?” she asked, and her voice was as tremulous as her hands. If she didn’t watch it, she’d cut herself.

“Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. We couldn’t get away if it weren’t for you. Shay, I’m so grateful.”

“It was the least I could do,” Shay replied, thinking of how frightened and alone she’d been when she had come back to Skyler Beach hoping to take refuge in her childhood home and found herself completely on her own. The Reeses had made all the difference. “What’s up?”

“I know it’s gauche, but I’m throwing my own going-away party. It’ll be at our beach house, this Saturday night. Can I count on you to be there?”

By Saturday night, Hank would be gone. The house would be entirely too quiet and the first television commercial would be looming directly ahead. A distraction, especially one of the Reeses’ elegant parties, would be welcome. “Is it formal?”

“Dress to the teeth, my dear.”

Shay tossed the last of the cucumber slices into the salad bowl and started in on the scallions. Her wardrobe consisted mostly of work or casual clothing; she was either going to have to buy a new outfit or drag the sewing machine out of the back of her closet and make one. “What time?”

“Eight,” Jeannie sang. “Ciao, darling. I’ve got fifty-six more people to call.”

Shay grinned. “Ciao,” she said, hanging up.

Almost instantly, the telephone rang again. This time the caller was Ivy. “You’ve heard about the party, I suppose?”

“Only seconds ago. How did you find out so fast?”

“Mrs. Reese appointed me to make some of the calls. Shay, what are you going to wear?”

“I don’t know.” The answer was sighed rather than spoken.

“We could hit the mall tomorrow, after work.”

“No chance. I’ve got too much to do. It’s tonight or nothing.”

Ivy loved to shop and her voice was a disappointed wail. “Oh, damn! I can’t turn a wheel tonight! I’ve got to sit right here in my apartment, calling all the Reeses’ friends. Promise me you’ll splurge, buy something really spectacular!”

Shay scraped a pile of chopped scallions into one hand with the blade of her knife and frowned suspiciously. “Ivy, what are you up to?”

“Up to?” Ivy echoed, all innocence.

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You’re awfully concerned, it seems to me, about how I plan to dress for the Reese party.”

“I just want you to look good.”

“For your brother, perhaps?”

“Shay Kendall!”

“Come on, Ivy. Come clean. He’s going to be there, isn’t he?”

“Well, I did suggest…”

Shay laughed, even though the pit of her stomach was jumping again and her heart was beating too fast. “That’s what I thought. Has it occurred to you, dear, that if Mitch wanted to see me again he would call me himself?”

“He did drop in for chicken last night,” Ivy reminded her friend.

Shay blushed to remember the way she had sobbed in Mitch’s arms like a shattered child. She’d probably scared him off for good. “That didn’t go too well. Don’t get your hopes up, Ivy.”

“Buy something fabulous,” insisted the irrepressible Ivy. And then she rang off.

By the time Hank had paraded through the kitchen in each of his new outfits—by some miracle, only one pair of jeans would have to be returned—the casserole was finished. Mother and son sat down to eat and then, after clearing the table and leaving the dishes to soak, they went off to the mall.

Exchanging the jeans took only minutes, but Shay spent a full hour in the fabric store, checking out patterns and material. Finally, after much deliberation, she selected a material that would make a nice floaty black skirt. In a boutique across the way, she bought a daring silver and black top, holding her breath the whole while. The shirt, while gorgeous, was heavy and impractical and far too expensive. Would she even have the nerve to wear it?

Twice, on the way back to her car, Shay stopped in her tracks. What was she doing, spending this kind of money for one party? She had to return the shirt.

It was Hank who stopped her from doing just that. “You’ll look real pretty in that shiny shirt, Mom,” he said.

Shay drew a deep breath and marched onward to the car. Every woman needed to wear something wickedly glamorous, at least once in her life. Rosamond had owned closetfuls of such things.

The telephone was ringing when Shay entered the house, and Hank leaped for the living room extension. He was a born positive-thinker, expecting every call to bring momentous news.

“Yeah, she’s here. Mom!”

Shay dropped her purchases on the couch and crossed the room to take the call. She was completely unprepared for the voice on the other end of the line, much as she’d hoped and dreaded to hear it earlier.

“You’ve heard about the party, I presume?” Mitch Prescott asked with that quiet gruffness that put everything feminine within Shay on instant red alert.

“Yes,” she managed to answer.

“I don’t think I can face it alone. How about lending me moral support?”

Shay couldn’t imagine Mitch shrinking from anything, or needing moral support, but she felt a certain terrified gladness at the prospect of being asked to go to the party with him. “Being a sworn humanitarian,” she teased, “I couldn’t possibly refuse such a request.”

His sigh of relief was an exaggerated one. “Thank you.”

Shay laughed. “Were you really that afraid of a simple party?”

“No. I was afraid you’d say no. That, of course, would have been devastating to my masculine ego.”

“We can’t have that,” Shay responded airily, glad that he couldn’t see her and know that she was blushing like a high-schooler looking forward to her first prom. “The Reeses’ beach house is quite a distance from town. We’d better leave at least a half an hour early.”

“Seven?”

“Seven,” Shay confirmed. The party, something of an obligation before, was suddenly the focal point of her existence; she was dizzy with excitement and a certain amount of chagrin that such an event could be so important to her. Shouldn’t she be dreading her son’s imminent departure instead of looking past it to a drive along miles and miles of moon-washed shore?

While Hank was taking his bath, under protest, Shay washed the dishes she’d left to soak and then got out her sewing machine. She was up long after midnight, adjusting the pattern and cutting out her silky skirt. Finally she stumbled off to bed.

The next day was what Hank would have called “hairy.” Three salesmen quit, Ivy went home sick and the people at Seaview called to say that Rosamond seemed to be in some kind of state.

“What kind of ‘state’?” a harried Shay barked into the receiver of the telephone in her office.

“She’s curled up in her bed,” answered the young and obviously inexperienced nurse. “She’s crying and calling for the baby.”

“Have you called her doctor?”

“He’s playing golf today.”

“Oh, at his rates, that’s just terrific!” Shay snapped. “You get him over there if you have to drag him off the course. Does Mother have her doll?”

“What doll?”

“The rag doll. The one she won’t be without.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“Find it!”

“I’ll call you back in a few minutes, Mrs. Kendall.”

“See that you do,” Shay replied in clipped tones just as Richard Barrett waltzed, unannounced, into her office.

“Bad day?”

Shay ran one hand through her already tousled hair and sank into the chair behind her desk. “Don’t you know how to knock?”

Richard held up both hands in a concessionary gesture. “I’m sorry.”

Shay sighed. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you that way. How can I help you?”

“I just wanted to remind you that we’re going to shoot the first commercial Monday morning. You’ve memorized the script, I assume?”

The script. If Shay hadn’t had a pounding headache, she would have laughed. “I say my line and then read off this week’s special used-car deals. That isn’t too tough, Richard.”

“I thought we might have a rehearsal tonight.”

Shay shook her head. “No chance. My mother is in bad shape and I have to go straight to the convalescent home as soon as I leave here.”

“After that—”

“My son is leaving on a camping trip with his uncle, Richard, and he’ll be gone a month. I want to spend the evening with him.”

“Shay—”

Now Shay held up her hands. “No more, Richard. You and Marvin insisted that I take this assignment and I agreed. But it will be done on my terms or not at all.”

A look of annoyance flickered behind Richard’s glasses. “Temperament rears its ugly head. I was mistaken about you, Shay. You’re more like your mother than I thought.”

The telephone began to jangle, and Ivy wasn’t out front to screen the calls. Shay dismissed Richard with a hurried wave of one hand and snapped “Hello?”

A customer began listing, in irate and very voluble terms, all the things that were wrong with the used car he’d bought the week before. While Shay tried to address the complaint, the other lines on her telephone lit up, all blinking at once.

It was nearly seven o’clock when Shay finally got home, and she had such a headache that she gave Hank an emergency TV dinner for supper, swallowed two aspirin and collapsed into bed.

Bright and early on Saturday morning, Garrett and his family arrived in a motor home more luxuriously appointed than many houses. While Maggie stayed behind with her own children and Hank, Shay and Garrett drove to Seaview to visit Rosamond.

Because the doll had been recovered, Rosamond was no longer curled up in her bed weeping piteously for her “baby.” Still, Garrett’s shock at seeing a woman he undoubtedly remembered as glamorous and flippant staring vacantly off into space showed in his darkly handsome face and the widening of his steel-gray eyes.