Reckless Moon (3 page)

“It’s late,” she said. “Shouldn’t you be getting home?”

His dark eyes narrowed. “Are you throwing me out?” he inquired.

Beth caught her breath at the antagonism that flared in his face, in his tone. The hair-trigger temper that had been his trademark since childhood lay just beneath the surface, ready to explode with the right provocation. She wasn’t going to supply it.

“Not at all,” she answered evenly. “I know you’re busy and I didn’t want to keep you.”

He snorted. “Busy with what?”

“Taking over Curtis Broadleaf. I’m sure you have a lot to do.”

He sighed. “Oh, yes, I’ve been accepted back into the fold now that Daddy is flat on his back. He’s turning me into quite the executive. I’m even thinking of joining the country club.”

“That’s the life you should have had all along, Bram,” Beth said quietly.

“What if it’s not the life I want!” he said fiercely. Then, seeing her alarmed reaction, he sighed and added wearily, “Never mind. I’ll get lost while you tend to things here. I see the troops have left you with quite a mess.”

“I have a crew coming in tomorrow morning to clean,” Beth said.

“Admirable foresight,” he commented.

Beth shot him a sidelong glance. Was he needling her again?

He knew what she was thinking and held up a hand. “I mean it. Anabel always sponsored mammoth debauches and then ran around screaming about the debris for days. Your approach is much more efficient.”

Beth couldn’t resist the opening he’d provided. “How is Anabel?” she asked carefully.

“Dying, I hope. Or at least suffering from a debilitating disease.”

The reply was so unexpected that Beth laughed. He apparently wasn’t big on pleasantries.

“You find my viciousness amusing?” Bram asked, cocking his head.

“You’re so outrageous, Bram. I know you don’t mean that.”

His lips twitched. “All right,” he relented. “Maybe I don’t wish her dead. But if I could lock her in a vault in Palm Beach, I would.”

“Does your father miss her?”

“About as much as he would miss Typhoid Mary.”

“He must have loved her once.”

Bram’s mouth thinned. “He was infatuated with her once.”

“She was very pretty.”

Bram inclined his head slowly, as if the admission were wrung from him. “Yes, she was.”

“I’m glad she left so that you were able to come home,” Beth said simply.

His head shot up, and his gaze became intent. “Why do you say that?”

Beth blinked, rattled. “Just because I know you two didn’t get along.”

He watched her a moment longer, and then nodded, satisfied. He walked past her to the door, stopping to lift a curl of dark brown hair from her neck.

“Good night, mouse,” he said lightly, and left. Beth sagged against the door after she had closed it, blinking back tears.

Mouse. He had called her that the night her father found them together, after she’d told Bram she’d performed the part of a mouse in the school play.

It was so unfair of him to remember that, and use it on her like a weapon.

Her fists clenched. She didn’t understand why after all this time Bram had finally acceded to his father’s wishes and come home. It was clear he wasn’t happy about his return, or the role his father wanted him to play. Bram was the last person on earth who could be coerced into doing something against his will. He had always done exactly as he pleased. What was going on?

Beth straightened and walked through the house, ending up, as she had known she would, in her father’s study. Unbidden, the memories washed over her again.

Bram had spoken of their time together with clarity, seeming to remember as much as Beth did. How could it have been that important to him? He was an experienced, well traveled man. Beth didn’t even want to think about the number of women he must have known during his seafaring days.

Beth settled in the chair next to the fireplace and stared at the picture of herself framed on her father’s desk, lost in the past.

CHAPTER 2

It was the fourth of July, three months before Beth’s seventeenth birthday. Her father was hosting his annual barbecue for half the valley, and Beth had invited some of her schoolmates. All during the long summer afternoon they’d splashed in the pool and lounged around the patio, a small clutch of teenagers adrift in a sea of her father’s friends. As the sun set in purple and orange splendor over the tobacco fields of northern Connecticut, Beth was ensconced in a deck chair by the diving board, sipping a soda. When she finished it Jim Hammond arrived and handed her another one, which she took and sniffed warily. Beth had a strong suspicion Jim was trying to get her drunk. He considered himself to be her boyfriend, a subject on which they had a difference of opinion. Jim sat next to her, and Beth leaned forward to see past him to the crowd surrounding her father.

Carter Forsyth liked to entertain. A prominent accountant with a firm in Hartford, he opened his house to business and social acquaintances three or four times a year for gatherings like this one. He said that it helped to ease the loneliness created by his wife’s death, and he might as well see his friends because he would never remarry.

Beth knew that she was his main concern in life. Marion, her older sister, was home for the summer, but during the year she was away at college. Marion was a solid and sensible girl who would make a good marriage and settle down to respectability. But their father considered Beth to be another story. He saw rebellion in her individuality and stubbornness in her determination to go her own way.

Feeling a pang of guilt, Beth got up and went over to her father, skirting the edge of the pool and walking barefoot onto the brick patio.

“Can I get you anything, Daddy?” she asked. “You’ve been looking after everyone else.”

“No, thanks, honey,” her father replied. “Just go into the garage and turn on the pool lights, if you would. It’ll be getting dark soon.”

As Beth turned to obey, she caught sight of a new arrival standing on the lawn. Deeply tanned, wearing jeans and a broadcloth shirt with the sleeves rolled above the elbows, a young man with dark, wavy hair and a grin that flashed in the fading light stood talking to her sister. Instantly alert, Beth watched them for a moment and then backtracked to her father.

“Daddy, who is that?” she inquired, tugging on his sleeve.

Her father put aside his martini shaker and glanced at her. “Who?”

“That dark man, the one talking to Marion.” Beth pointed surreptitiously.

Carter followed the direction of his daughter’s hidden finger. “Oh. Why honey, don’t you recognize him?”

Beth shook her head mutely. If she had seen him before, she would have remembered.

“I guess that’s right,” Carter said, “you were too young when he left. That’s Bram Curtis, Joshua’s son.”

The name rang a bell, presenting a roll call of hair-raising stories associated with Mr. Curtis’s sole offspring. Beth narrowed her eyes, trying to remember.

“I think he only came back to the house because Joshua and Anabel are away,” Beth’s father went on. “He never shows up when that woman is around. It’s a damn shame. He’s a wanderer on the face of the earth, that boy.”

“Is he the one Momma used to talk about?” Beth asked.

Carter nodded. “She rather liked him.”

It was coming back to Beth now. Her mother had always said that the Curtis boy had “gone to sea,” in a wistful tone that suggested that she might have liked to go to sea herself. It was such a beautiful expression, calling up images of a sky filled with foreign constellations like the Southern Cross, and phosphorescent waves sparkling with St. Elmo’s fire. Beth wanted to meet the man who had gone to sea.

“He sent me the kindest note when she died,” Carter added. “I knew he was back at the house, so I called and asked him to come over today.”

“That was nice of you, Daddy.”

“Go and put those lights on for me, Beth,” her father said.

Beth did as he asked, and when she got back Bram Curtis was gone. Marion still occupied the same spot, chatting with a middle aged woman Beth didn’t know.

Beth stifled her annoyance. It was just like her sister to let somebody like that get away. Marion might be three years her senior, but when it came to men she was as dense as a tree.

Beth waited until the older woman drifted away, and then corralled Marion.

“What happened to Bram Curtis?” she demanded

Marion glanced at her, startled. “I don’t know. What do you want with him?”
 

“I wanted to meet him.”

“I’d watch out if I were you. He seems nice enough, but some of the things people say about him...” She shuddered delicately. “He scares me.”

Beth sighed impatiently. Marion was afraid of everything. Scaring Marion was the highest recommendation Curtis could have; it proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t in the same league with Marion’s colorless college boyfriends, who put Beth to sleep.

“Did he go into the house?” Beth demanded.

Marion glanced around the lawn. “He might have. I don’t see him out here. He knows Mindy’s family; he could have gone looking for her.”

“Thanks, Marion, you’ve been a big help,” Beth said sarcastically.

“Well, I’m not his bodyguard,” Marion retorted. “And you’d better watch yourself; you know Daddy wouldn’t like...”

Beth walked away, not staying to hear what Daddy wouldn’t like. Daddy didn’t like much of anything Beth did and it had never stopped her.

Beth changed direction and slipped into the powder room just inside the door when she saw Jim heading her way. If she remained secluded long enough maybe he would amuse himself elsewhere.

She looked into the mirror over the sink and assessed her reflection. Not bad, she thought, not half bad. Deep brown hair midway down her back, large blue eyes, pale skin lightly tanned for the summer, a mature figure encased in a two-piece bathing suit and a terry coverup. She decided to go upstairs and change into something more appropriate for the evening, and peeked out the door to make sure the coast was clear.

Jim was gone. She made her way stealthily to the stairs, and was about to climb them when she glanced into the kitchen and saw the bottle of gin standing on the counter. It gave her an idea.

She poured a glass of orange juice from the jug in the refrigerator. She was standing with the gin bottle in her hand, wondering how much liquor to add, when a masculine voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Aren’t you a little young to be on the sauce?”

Beth jumped, almost dropping the liquor. Bram Curtis stood in the doorway, lounging against the jamb, grinning at her.

“It’s for my father,” she answered guiltily.

“A likely story,” he replied, laughing.

“I don’t drink,” she protested.

“Good for you, Beth. It is Beth, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”
 

“Short for Elizabeth?”

“Bethany.”

“Bethany,” he repeated, trying it out on his tongue. “Very pretty, like its owner. You must be driving all those adolescent males out of their minds.”

Beth flushed. It was the sort of remark many people made, but the way he said it carried an implication beyond the compliment She could see immediately why he unnerved Marion. But Beth was not her sister; what intimidated the older girl intrigued the younger. Beth moved closer, looking at him.

“I seem to remember a first grader who was never seen without a mangy mutt with a scraggly gray tail, and a giant lollipop,” Bram said. “I must say you’ve made a splendid progression from all day suckers.”

“The dog was Alcatraz,” Beth replied. “He went into convulsions last winter and we had to put him to sleep.”

Bram’s dark eyes filled with sympathy. “I’m sorry,” he said “That must have been very hard for you.”

Why, he’s nice, Beth thought suddenly. She felt a surge of confidence. “It was,” she replied. “I had him since I was two.”

Bram came into the kitchen and took the glass from Beth’s hand. “Why don’t we forget this, and you can come and talk to me. Tell me all about high school. I have a burning desire to relive the days of my misspent youth.”

Beth giggled. He was a wonderful talker; it was a treat to listen to him.

“Okay,” she agreed eagerly, even though she suspected his idea had more to do with keeping her away from the gin than his curiosity about her life. But one look into his liquid brown eyes convinced her that it didn’t matter; she wanted to be with him, and that was it.

“Where shall we go?” he asked, looking around.

“My father’s study?”

He made a sweeping gesture with his glass. “Lead on, fair lady.”

Bram followed Beth down the hall to the den while she wondered why he was choosing to spend time with her. Surely he had better things to do. Then he smiled down at her as she opened the door, and she ceased to care whether he was trying to maintain her sobriety or gathering material for an expose on her nonexistent love life. She shut the door after them and sat down.