Otherwise Engaged (15 page)

“That’s why I’ve been avoiding you,” she admonished him breathlessly.

“Aha, so you admit it. You
have
been avoiding me.”

She turned to face him. “You want the truth?”

For a fraction of a second Pres considered saying no. No, he didn’t want to know the truth. He had a feeling that it wasn’t going to be something he wanted to hear. But he nodded. “Yes. Please. Tell me the truth.”

“I like you too much,” she told him bluntly. “I’m afraid I’m going to do something really stupid, like sleep with you.”

This wasn’t a bad truth. This was a good truth. A very,
very
good truth. “Would that be so terrible?”

Molly looked down at her bare feet as she scratched a line into the sand with one toe. She didn’t need to answer, he could see it on her face. Yes, it would be terrible.

But she was wrong, and he was determined to convince her otherwise.

Pres reached for her hand and they began to walk again, the photographers slowly trailing along about fifty yards behind them, just far enough away to give them the illusion of privacy.

Molly glanced up at him. “I almost called you back yesterday.”

“I wish you had.”

She squinted slightly as she gazed out over the sparkling blue ocean. The wind swept her hair into her face, and she used her other hand to brush it out of her eyes. “Zander and I went to the library, and while we were there the librarian told us that the most wonderful thing has happened—an anonymous donor gave a present to the library in the form of five thousand compact discs—along with shelves to store them.”

Pres didn’t even try to deny that he was the mysterious donor. “You told me you didn’t want me to give Zander such a big gift, so I did the next
best thing. I gave it to the public library. This way, he has access to a huge collection of music, and I haven’t overstepped your boundaries.”

“You’re amazing,” Molly said, but the tone of her voice wasn’t quite admiration. “You don’t take no for an answer, do you? When someone tells you no, you don’t give up. You find another solution and somehow manage to get your way.”

“You say that as if that’s something bad.”

Molly stopped walking, turning toward him. “It’s not—at least not in this case. Giving the library an extensive CD collection was a wonderful idea. I know how expensive it must’ve been, and I thank you for that. But …” She took a deep breath. “I find myself wondering about the other things I’ve said no to. You wanted to buy the Kirk Estate and I said no. You invited me back to your room and I said no. I can’t help but think that sooner or later, despite my saying no, you’re going to get what you want.”

God, he hoped so. But he didn’t dare say those words aloud. He glanced over his shoulder at the photographers and they started walking again, but Molly persisted.

“I got a very interesting phone call today,” she
continued. “From someone named Simon Hunt, from the Sunrise Key Historical Society—which, incidentally and quite oddly, didn’t seem to exist before just a few days ago.”

Pres knew what was coming.

“Simon Hunt,” she repeated, looking up at him. “That wouldn’t be the same Simon from the scuba-diving story you were telling Zander, would it?”

“It would.”

“Of course. I’m happy to hear he’s survived until now. Anyway, Mr. Hunt informed me that the Kirk Estate has been awarded a restoration grant to the tune of one hundred thousand dollars.”

“Congratulations.”

“As if you didn’t know about it,” Molly accused him. “As if you weren’t the sole financial backer behind this so-called Sunrise Key Historical Society.”

“If you’re going to restore the Kirk Estate, you should do it right.”

“Which means doing it
your
way,” she countered. “Right?”

“I happen to believe that restoration involves
reusing as much of the original materials as possible and—”

“I was sent a copy of the grant,” Molly said. “The fine print said that any restoration done on the house would need to be approved by a liaison from the historical society. Gee, I wonder who that will turn out to be?”

“It’ll be me.”

“Big surprise. The grant also mentioned a teeny little detail about the resale of the house. According to the agreement, if I accept the grant money, I have to give the Sunrise Key Historical Society
and its benefactor
the right of first refusal if I ever decide to sell.” She gazed steadily at him. “Look me in the eye and tell me that you’re not the benefactor.”

Pres looked her in the eye. “You’re absolutely right. I’m the benefactor.”

“And according to this grant, I’ll need to get your approval even if I want to replace something as trivial as the grout around a loose tile in the bathroom …?” Her voice rang with disbelief.

“Believe it or not, there are different types of grout that were used depending on—”

“Dear Lord, I
knew
it! If I accept this grant, I’ll
end up restoring this entire house with
your
money,
your
way. With
you
breathing down my neck the entire time.” Molly pulled her hand away from his and began walking rapidly back toward the house.

Pres caught up with her easily. “Would that really be so terrible? Working closely with me that way?”

Molly spun to face him, and he nearly tripped over her. “Maybe you could clear up one thing that I’m not certain of here,” she said, spitting fire. “Are you using the house to try to sleep with me, or are you trying to sleep with me to get ahold of the house?”

Pres couldn’t help it. He had to laugh, and unfortunately, that only made her more furious. He caught her arm before she could run away again, and got real serious, real fast.

“Molly, come on. Wait. I don’t even
want
your house anymore.” As he spoke the words he realized that they were the truth. He didn’t want the Kirk Estate.

Molly glanced toward the photographers and lowered her voice. “And you expect me just to believe you.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t want to buy your house, because I want you and Zander to stay here on Sunrise Key.”

Molly stared at Pres. Her burst of anger was fading fast, leaving behind a swirl of other emotions. They were strange emotions that mixed peculiarly with the remnants of the anger—something that felt remarkably like pleasure and this odd fluttering sensation of anticipation in her stomach.

“If I buy your house,” he continued, “then you’ll leave. And I don’t want you to leave.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But the grant …”

“Right of first refusal is pretty much standard boilerplate in this kind of private funding,” Pres told her. “At least that’s what my lawyer told me.”

“So you’re just giving me a hundred thousand dollars …?”

“It’s tax-deductible.”

“Oh,
that
explains it.”

Molly couldn’t handle this—not what she was hearing and especially not what she was feeling. She went down to the water and stood with the
gentle Gulf waves lapping over her feet. Pres followed, as she knew he would, but she couldn’t look at him. She didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to feel her insides start to melt when he flashed her one of his killer smiles. She didn’t want to feel the quickening of anticipation when he brushed against her. She didn’t want her heart to race when she gazed into his eyes.

“What exactly do you want from me, Pres?” she asked. She wasn’t brave enough to turn her head and meet his gaze.

Pres didn’t answer right away. It should have been a simple question. He wanted her. He wanted to make love to her. He wanted her to be his lover.

He wanted a cigarette. He forcefully pushed that thought away.

Yes, he wanted to be Molly’s lover, but he also wanted more. He’d known for days, when every time he called she made some excuse not to see him. He’d known when every time he’d dropped by, she’d asked him to stay with Zander for a few hours while she ran some errands. He’d known the truth. This was about more than mere sex.

He wanted to be with Molly, to talk with her,
to make her laugh, to watch her smile. He wanted to share more with her than passion in bed. He wanted to share her joy and love for Zander, and even her pain of knowing her son’s deafness was worsening little by little, day by day. He wanted to share her life, to commingle it with his life, so neither of them would ever be alone again. He wanted a family. He wanted that ring he’d put on Molly’s finger to be real.

He wanted too much, too soon.

Too much, too soon—that described his short affair and rushed marriage with Merrilee Fender. That had been a total disaster. There was no way he was going to make that same mistake again.

That was why he hadn’t pushed when over the past few days Molly had repeatedly turned down his dinner invitations. Although hot and heavy best described his impulsive style when it came to both his personal and business life, Pres was trying his hardest to follow Molly’s lead and take whatever this was they shared between them extremely slowly.

After all, he’d been wrong before.

What did he want from her? she’d asked. He brought it all down to the simplest equation.
“You know what I want. I want to see where this thing between us can go.”

She nodded slowly, still looking out at the ocean, where the gleaming white sails of a boat moved slowly across the horizon. “You know damn well that the first place it would go is right into your bed.”

“I can’t deny that I want to make love to you,” he said evenly. “You know that I do.”

“So this is about sex,” Molly said. “And the hundred-thousand-dollar grant is supposed to be some kind of billionaire-style foreplay?”

Pres couldn’t help but laugh. “No.”

“Then is it some kind of payment?”

He turned her to face him. “Of course not. One thing has absolutely nothing to do with the other.”

“I find that hard to believe—combined with the huge gift you gave to the library.” Molly met his eyes squarely. “Not to mention that amazingly expensive dress and shoes you sent to the house for me to wear to the party tonight. And I stopped in at Dr. Devlin’s office this morning to pick up some forms for the school, and he told me you’d been by, asking all kinds of questions about degenerative
hearing loss. You went to see the doctor because you thought maybe there was some ultraexpensive operation you could buy to make Zander all better, right?”

Pres couldn’t deny it. “Yes, but—”

“I wish there were,” Molly said. “But God help me, if there were, I would have already found a way for Zander to have that operation, regardless of the cost. Money isn’t the solution to every problem, Pres. Believe it or not, there are some things money can’t buy.”

“I know that—”

“And I’m one of them. I’m not going to accept the historical society’s grant.”

She started walking up the beach, toward the path to the house. Frustrated, Pres followed, well aware of the small crowd of photographers and news cameras trailing after them.

“Molly, I’m not trying to buy you.”

She stopped walking, glancing quickly toward the cameras before looking up into his eyes. “Are you sure?” she asked quietly.

Then she put her arms around him and gave him the gentlest and sweetest of kisses, all for the benefit of those cameras.

“Don’t follow me back to the house,” she told him. “And smile. Zander and I will see you tonight.”

Pres caught her hand. “I’m
not
trying to buy you.”

She smiled for the cameras as she pulled free, then hurried up the hot sand toward the shaded path.

She didn’t say the words again, but they seemed to echo in Pres’s head as he watched her go.

Are you sure?

P
RES KNOCKED TWICE
on the door of the suite next to his. An hour ago he’d sent Lenny, his driver, over to pick up Molly and Zander and bring them to the resort. He’d thought it might be easier for them to get dressed for the party away from the dust and rubble of the Kirk Estate’s restorations, and Molly had agreed.

Pres knocked again, louder this time, and Zander opened the door.

The boy was wearing a white dress shirt tucked haphazardly into a pair of tan dress pants. Attached to his collar was a crooked clip-on tie. As
usual, his glasses were slightly askew and his hair stood straight up in several places.

“Mom’s still in the bedroom, getting dressed.” He gazed at Pres, stepping back to let him into the suite. “You look … funny.”

“Gee, thanks, Z.”

“I don’t mean funny ha-ha,” Zander explained. “I mean funny weird.”

“That’s better?” Pres glanced in the entryway mirror and adjusted his tuxedo jacket.

Zander looked at himself in the mirror, too, and futilely tried to comb down his hair. “You look like you come from one of those old movies Mom loves.”

That
was
better. “You want me to help you with that?” Pres offered.

Zander handed him the comb. “I have problem hair.”

“You need to wet it down,” Pres suggested, trying hard not to smile. One of the bedroom doors was closed, so he led Zander toward the other one. The boy followed him into the bathroom that was attached and stood patiently as Pres wet the comb under the faucet.

“Did you get all your homework done?” Pres asked as he combed Zander’s hair.

Zander chewed on his lower lip. “Sort of.”

“Sort of? How can you sort of do your homework? Either you do it or you don’t.”

Zander met Pres’s gaze in the mirror, then quickly looked away. “I sort of … don’t have any homework.”

Pres set the comb down on the sink counter, watching the boy in the mirror. “I thought fifth graders had homework most schoolnights.”

“They do.”

“I see. But you don’t.”

“No.”

Silence. It stretched on and on and on.

Pres finally asked, “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

Zander hesitated. “School isn’t going too well,” he finally admitted. “The kids are nice—they’re great in fact—but my teacher, Mr. Towne …”

Pres felt his heart sink. Of course. Stanley Towne was Zander’s teacher. He’d heard the man’s name many times before, and never connected to anything complimentary. As far as Pres
could figure it, Towne had burned out as a teacher years ago. He was unpleasant and grouchy and generally disliked. But because of his tenure in the school system, he couldn’t be let go.