Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) (9 page)

She frowned as she realized it was possible that at least a part of his concern was real. It was also possible he couldn't help his habit of sermonizing, any more than he could control his self-important attitude. He and her aunt had no children, which was, Cammie had often thought, a pity. If they had managed to have a half dozen or so, her uncle might have had less time for her.

“Yes, well,” she said, “I'll try to keep it in mind.”

“Do that. And I wish you would give Keith a chance. He's made mistakes, but most of us have.” Seeing the stiffness returning to her face, he hurried on. “I would be happy if you would let me guide you in this trying time, if you would come and worship with me.”

Cammie smiled without answering, other than to repeat her message to her aunt. It was a source of embarrassment to her uncle, she knew, that she and her parents had never attended his church. The Greenley family had been active for generations in the small church just down the road on what had once been Greenley land. She saw no reason to change now.

She watched her uncle's portly figure as he took himself away down the steps, walking quickly to his car. It was only after he had driven off that she looked toward the garage.

Her Cadillac sat inside. On it were four perfect tires with thick new treads and pure white sidewalk.

Reid. How had he managed to get it done? It was just now time for the service department of the local tire store to open. He was an amazing man. In a lot of ways.

I
only need tonight.

The echo in her mind made her wince in sudden mental pain.

He had taken her at her word, and why shouldn't he? She had meant it at the time. Or so she thought.

It had been, after all, a dumb thing to say.

Heat climbed into her face as she thought of other things she had said to him in the night, other things she had done with him.

What had gotten into her? What must he think of her?

He had been so very different from Keith. It wasn't just the hard perfection of his body, or even his experienced skill, though these things had been a part of it. Rather, it was the concentration he brought to what he was doing. It was as if nothing existed except the two of them and the moment. Nothing mattered other than the pleasure he took from her body, and that he gave in return. She had felt so many things, wondrous, unimagined things, but most of all she had felt… cherished.

She needed more of that. Like some dangerous drug, she could easily become addicted to his touch, his presence beside her in the dark.

Persephone appeared from the direction of the laundry with a stack of freshly folded dishcloths in her hand. Her eyes shrewd in her brown face, she said, “You didn't offer the preacher any of my peach cobbler?”

“I didn't think about it,” Cammie said.

“Right,” came the dry answer. It was quickly followed by another probe. “He sure was in a hurry.”

Cammie smiled with a weary shake of her head. “He has a lot of other people's business to mind.”

“Don't you know it,” Persephone said with a chuckle. Her dark eyes were bright as she went on, “Mr. Reid, he sure was up late last night.”

Cammie looked at her housekeeper with resignation. “How do you know?”

“Lizbeth, who does for him, she's a cousin of mine.”

“I never knew that.” It seemed a failing, somehow, that she had not. The two women, now that she thought of it, shared the same bright-colored skin, the same long hair. Persephone was more slightly built, however, with a wiry strength in her short frame. Her hair was streaked with gray and tightly drawn back in a knot on top of her head.

The housekeeper lifted a shoulder as she replied, “I've got near as many cousins as you, maybe more. Anyway, Lizbeth said he was out till all hours, then after he come in, he went right back in the woods again. He had more clothes wrinkled up and wet than she had seen him use up since he was a boy. He's mostly as neat a man as a body ever come across.”

Reid had few secrets from Lizbeth, that much was clear. Cammie thought in resignation that she probably had no more from Persephone. She was reluctant to end the conversation, anyway. It gave her an odd pleasure to hear some of the intimate details of Reid's life.

She said, “But he made it home without any problem?”

“Oh, yes indeed. He was looking kind of low, though. And Lizbeth said he started making phone calls as soon as it got daylight. Seems like he may be going on a trip.”

“Oh?”

There was a shadow of sympathy in Persephone's dark eyes. “He didn't say where he was heading, but he was hell-bent on making sure he got there.”

For the first hour of the five-hour drive to New Orleans, Cammie worried the information she had discovered about Reid like a cat with a toy mouse. He had said nothing to her about going out of town. There had not been a lot of opportunity, of course, but it seemed he might have mentioned it in passing when he heard she was going to be gone for the weekend.

Was there some reason he hadn't told her? Was he seeing another woman? Did he have business with some group of right-wing crazies who wanted to take over the country using his arsenal? Had he been recalled by the CIA for some dangerous mission in Eastern Europe or China?

She was being as ridiculous as her uncle, the reverend, she told herself. Reid had a perfect right to go anywhere he wanted, stay as long as he pleased. She had no claim on his time, nor did she want any. He owed her nothing, especially not a detailed itinerary of his days. Or his nights.

She was going to the Crescent City, and she was going to have a good time. She was going to forget Keith and his unwanted attentions, forget Greenley, forget Reid and the gossips and everything else. She was going to eat good food, drink a little wine, maybe dance a little. Or a lot. She needed to get away, to try to relax. If she couldn't do it in the City that Care Forgot, it couldn't be done.

She felt better by the time she reached Alexandria and shot from narrow, two-laned 167 onto Interstate 49. She began to smile as she sailed over the great Mississippi River bridge at Baton Rouge and knew she was on the east bank. By the time she crossed the Bonne Carré spillway on Interstate 10 and looked out over the vast brown expanse of Lake Pontchartrain, she was exuberant.

New Orleans was, and always would be, special to her. The air was softer there, the rhythm slower, the music hotter, the atmosphere looser. The sweet olive bloomed sooner in New Orleans, perfuming the streets with its old-fashioned sweetness. The rich miasma of cooking seafood shook the taste buds and urged them to wake up. The wild cross-mix of colors and races, classes and types, was a constant and fascinating puzzle. The old buildings like Beauregard House and the Cabildo gave her a sense of wondrous permanence, as did the river that wound like a giant snake around the town. New Orleans was both a challenge and a rest cure. She was more herself, less a Greenley of Greenley there. She loved it.

The hotel where the CODOFIL conference was being held was that most French of New Orleans hotels, the Royal Orleans. Built on the site of the famous old St. Louis Hotel favored in pre-Civil War days by the aristocratic Creoles of the Vieux Carré, it was located in the heart of the French Quarter at Royal and St. Louis streets. Cammie would not be staying there herself, but would be within easy walking distance. She had been offered the use of an apartment owned by a family friend, an attorney from Baton Rouge who kept it as a pied-à-terre for business or pleasure trips to the city.

The caretakers for the apartment, an elderly man and his wife, who had been with the attorney for years, let Cammie in. Pressing a drink into her hand, they sent her out to the courtyard to rest from her drive while they unpacked her bag.

The sun had set and evening shadows were beginning to gather between the ancient brick walls. Cammie sat sipping her chilled white wine and enjoying the soft, warm air and the stir of a gentle breeze from the river. The noise of the traffic in the streets beyond the thick walls was no more than a distant murmur. By slow degrees she felt some of her tension begin to slip away, banished by the drifting fragrance of Confederate jasmine from the vine that climbed one wall, by the soft clatter of banana leaves and the musical spatter of the corner fountain, which was surrounded by impatiens in shades of red and coral-pink.

If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel Reid beside her. If he were there, the two of them might sit in just this kind of restful silence. Or perhaps they would talk quietly of little things while the knowledge of the long night that lay ahead of them, a night of loving, flowed between them. He might take her hand and fit it to his until the spaces between every finger was filled with him. Perhaps he would raise it to his lips and press a kiss into the palm, flicking it with his tongue….

Daydreams.

She thought she had outgrown them, that she was too old to need them. Apparently, she had been wrong. And what harm was there in them, so long as she knew where they ended and reality began?

It was a wrenching effort to drag herself from her chair and go inside. There was no help for it, however. She had to get ready for the cocktail party that was to open the conference.

Cammie's mother had been distantly related to the Barrows of southern Louisiana, who were in turn descended from the Barrows of Virginia. Her mother never made much of the connection, but she still had inherited certain immovable ideas along with the bloodlines. It had been a maxim with her that Old Money did not follow fashion's trends. Quality, according to her mother, was the only important criteria, whether it was in cars, in furniture, in clothes, or in something so mundane as garden clippers.

She did not believe in designer labels. For clothing, there were a few classic styles, a few soft, natural fabrics that were suitable for everything from evening wear to raincoats. Anything else was trendy nonsense suitable only for the new rich who felt it necessary to show off their wealth, or else teenagers with a need to be different.

Cammie tended to follow her mother's reasoning because it was simple and easy. Her dress for the cocktail party was a classic black sheath in silk crepe that fastened on her left shoulder and had a flowing pleat down the side.

Her jewelry had also come from her mother. It consisted of a gold-and-diamond pin in a fleur-de-lis design, a pair of classic diamond earrings, and a set of combs set with pave diamonds that she used to hold her hair in a shining cascade down the back of her head. The long pleat of her dress opened to several inches above the knee for a provocative glimpse of slender leg as she walked, but the look achieved was basically one of elegant simplicity.

She was just spraying the sides of her hair to hold the escape of wisps to a minimum when the doorbell rang. It startled her; there were one or two people from the conference who knew where she was staying, but she had made no arrangements to meet with any of them before the party. Rising from the dressing table and smoothing her dress into place, she moved through the antique-crowded bedroom into the living room.

The caretaker, standing erect and formal, had opened the door to the new arrival. He bowed the gentleman into the room, then made a discreet departure.

The man turned with casual ease toward where Cammie stood. He brushed aside the black satin lapel of the jacket of his perfectly cut evening suit and pushed one hand into his pocket. The movement brought into prominence the soft white of his shirt front, with its gold studs, and the black cummerbund that wrapped his flat waist. There was appreciation in the dark blue of his eyes as they rested on her, and also the stillness of waiting.

All men looked good in evening dress; attractive men were often stunning in it. Few, however, wore it with real ease. This one did.

As he inclined his head in the briefest of greetings, the light of the chandelier overhead caught in his dark blond hair with the sheen of old gold. A slow smile curved his mouth as he saw the disbelief that rose in her face. “I came,” he said quietly, “to see if you were in need of an escort. Only for tonight.”

It was Reid.

IN KEEPING WITH THE FRENCH THEME of the
conference, arrangements had been made to hold the cocktail party at an old French Quarter mansion located just off Jackson Square. Decorations were primarily in French blue and included the tricolor of France paired with the Louisiana state flag, with its nesting pelican on a blue ground.

The French ambassador was there with his charming wife, both looking bored but consistently gracious. The governor moved here and there in quick succession, flashing his charismatic smile and spilling bon mots with a Cajun flavor around him like largesse. A number of senators and representatives where shaking hands and whispering in the corners. The Neville Brothers were circulating, enjoying themselves hugely. Harry Connick, Jr., was holding court near the windows and not far from the door, in case of the need for a quick getaway. The familiar faces of local television luminaries were scattered here and there. Anne Rice was rumored to be coming, and a somewhat inebriated society matron was taking bets on whether she would or would not be wearing black. The CODOFIL people, most of them state officials and schoolteachers, or else city people with ties to the old French émigrés, were conspicuous by their inconspicuousness.

Being New Orleans, the food was a major attraction. It consisted of the usual enormous and beautifully piled fruit trays, the silver dishes of crudités with accompanying dips, and the chefs in tall, fluted hats slicing bits of meat from huge haunches of roast beef and stuffing them into minute rolls. There were also boiled new potatoes cut in half and spread with sour cream dotted with caviar, oysters on the half shell, bacon-wrapped broiled oysters, spicy boiled shrimp, bite-size crab rolls, plus a dozen other such substantial delicacies.

Wine and spirits were dispensed with flare and dispatch by white-coated waiters. A jazz band played a combination of mellow and up-tempo pieces outside in the courtyard, while inside a string quartet scraped out Verdi and Mozart.

There was little to distinguish it from a hundred other parties Cammie had attended in New Orleans. The most astonishing development was the way Reid adapted to the occasion. He moved about the room with her without self-consciousness or any apparent inclination toward fading against the nearest wall and holding it up, that habit of most southern men faced with an uncomfortable situation. Smiling and at ease with whatever person or group he happened to find himself with, he initiated conversations and expressed his views with assurance. The bits and pieces of French that were tossed around as an inevitable part of the evening were not only comprehensible to him, but on several occasions he was able to add to them.

The change was unsettling. Cammie kept turning to look at him again and again, comparing him in her mind to the man in the woods. She had been so certain he was a total red-neck, not precisely ignorant or socially inept, but certainly without the most remote interest in or acquaintance with the language of diplomacy.

Reid, catching her sidelong glance as they stood alone for a change near a set of French doors that were open to the night air, returned it with startled inquiry for a second. Then a slow grin curved his mouth.

“Embassy parties,” he said with a shrug, as if reading her mind was nothing at all. “I was in and out of Washington for several years. And a good friend of mine is a Frenchman from Tel Aviv, now in New York.”

“You worked with him during the intifada?” she said.

His grin faded. Stillness gathered in his face while his eyes took on the blue-gray sheen of polished steel. When he spoke, his voice rasped like a weapon being unsheathed.

“Where did you get that?”

“The rumor mill,” she said at once. “Is it wrong?”

His gaze slid away from hers. “No,” he answered after an instant, the words toneless. “No, it's just that I sometimes forget its accuracy.”

There was something in his voice that stirred her curiosity. She tilted her head to one side as she said, “Were you in Israel long?”

“Long enough.”

It was as if there were shields going up in his mind, clanging into place one after the other, closing off access. To probe further would be useless; he was going to tell her not one single thing more than he wanted her to know.

In some peculiar fashion, those internal barriers, that hard inner core where she was forbidden to enter, evoked respect. If she also felt the urge to test them, she at least still had the good manners to refrain.

Abandoning that touchy subject for another, she said, “Why did you come tonight? I mean really.”

He looked at the glass of bourbon and soda in his hand as if he had just discovered it. “It seemed as good a way as any to spend a weekend.”

“I still don't understand how you managed an invitation.”

“Contacts.”

That much seemed to be true. She had seen him nodding across the room to one of the female liaison officers from the French embassy, another acquaintance, no doubt, from his Washington days. And Senator Grafton from their district, an influential man on Capitol Hill, had waylaid Reid when he went to freshen their drinks, keeping him in close conversation for a good fifteen minutes.

The implication that he had shown up in New Orleans to be with her was flattering, of course. It also made her nervous. Did he expect to continue with the arrangement of the night before? Did she want it herself, after all?

“I don't think you said where you're staying.” She hadn't thought to ask, either. She had been so astounded by the way he had turned up, and that he had known where to find her, that she'd gone with him to the party as docilely as a lamb to the slaughter.

“Windsor Court,” he answered with quiet humor in his eyes. “I didn't, you see, take my welcome for granted.”

Her smile in return was perfunctory. Sex without strings, without expectations, between two virtual strangers. That was what she had offered, and what he had accepted.

There was a deep-down eroticism in the idea, especially when the man was as attractive as Reid Sayers. She had never in her life been so aware of herself as a woman. The heat of his gaze, now and then, when he forgot to guard it, was like a caress. She had seen him inhale deeply as he stood near her, then smile as if he enjoyed the fragrance of her gardenia perfume, and her. She could feel her body tightening in places, softening in others under the silk of her dress when he brushed against her. It was, in its way, frightening. But exciting, also. And tempting.

Still, she was not sure a relationship would work beyond their one stupendous night. There were too many pitfalls, too many unknowns, too many differences between them. There were too many people involved, and not enough privacy.

She had no doubt whatever the news of the two of them spending the weekend in New Orleans was already circulating back in Greenley. She could just hear the telephones ringing, see the carts pushed close together at the grocery store. The rich imaginations of those who were dependent on prime-time television for excitement had few bounds. The gossips probably had them naked in bed in some hotel suite at that instant, sipping champagne and doing wicked and lascivious things with what was left in the bottle.

“What are you thinking about?” Reid asked, sounding intrigued as he surveyed her flushed face.

She turned a wide, considering gaze on him. Her voice husky, she said, “Human nature.”

The evening advanced. Cammie's feet, in black silk shoes that matched her dress, began to protest against so much standing. Her smile felt strained. The female liaison officer, ultrachic in a YSL dress of yellow silk cut several inches above her shapely knees, had taken Reid away to introduce him to friends. The two of them had wound up in a corner talking and laughing in such quiet voices that Reid apparently had to bend his head within inches of the woman's lips to hear her.

The Frenchwoman wasn't the only female in the room who had noticed him. There was a pair of young schoolteachers who had paraded past him with over-bright smiles at least three times. A woman in red with a cloud of hair dyed an unlikely shade of midnight-black was eyeing him with hunger in her face. And a red-haired female in a dress covered with glittering aqua beads was sending him sultry signals over the shoulder of her balding husband.

It was funny, in its way. It might have been more entertaining to Cammie had she not been certain that Reid missed nothing of what was happening. It was possible that there was such a thing as being too alert.

It was time to go.

There were couples she had seen, most of them long married, who could communicate with a glance across a room, letting each other know infallibly when they had had enough. Such a convenient method was unlikely to suffice with her and Reid, but she was willing to give it a try. She turned her gaze in his direction.

Reid looked up, glancing toward her with a smile and an almost imperceptible nod. She felt a small catch in her breathing.

At the moment, there was a light touch on her elbow. “Mrs. Hutton, I've been anxious to have a word with you all evening, but you've been surrounded every time I looked your way. Could I persuade you to give me a moment now?”

Cammie swung to see Senator Grafton beside her. Tall and a little stooped, he had the long face, the lank hair, and melancholy air shown in the later portraits of Jefferson Davis. He was, in fact, distantly related to the former Confederate president, a fact he downplayed with considerable skill, since he was a Democrat dependent on the black vote. She gave him her hand and a pleasant greeting, then stood waiting to discover what he wanted of her. It wasn't long in coming.

“As a prominent member of the younger set in Greenley, I'm well-aware of the influence you have there,” the senator began with a somber smile. “I wanted to ask your support in pushing through this arrangement with the paper mill. The Swedish conglomerate is anxious to get into the American market, but they don't want a lot of trouble. I know the old guard in town is fairly nonprogressive and may move to try to prevent the sale, but I'm sure you'll agree that the prospect of two thousand new jobs outweighs tradition by a considerable margin.”

Cammie stared at him. “You mean — are you saying there's a Swedish company negotiating to buy the mill?”

“You didn't know? I assumed, since you were with Sayers—” The senator hesitated, plainly uneasy with his mistake.

“No, I didn't,” Cammie said candidly, “and I'm not sure I like the idea, not if there's going to be an expansion of any size.”

“The benefits for the area will be enormous. I'm speaking of the financial aspect, of course.”

Cammie's father had been a conservationist of sorts. She was no stranger to discussion about industrial land use versus ecological needs. Her own affection for the woodlands around Evergreen had sharpened her interest in the problems. She tilted her head, her hazel eyes sober, as she said, “But the mill, running at its present capacity, maintains a good balance with the surrounding timberland and watershed. What will happen if the capacity is increased?”

Senator Grafton touched the knot of his tie, an expression of acute discomfort on his thin face. “I'm afraid that's not my department, but I feel sure every effort will be made to satisfy regulations.”

“Regulations are fine, but they don't always control the quality of the water people drink and the air they breathe. Then there's the wildlife. Two thousand new jobs would, I think, mean almost double the present production. That will call for twice the number of trees being cut, twice the wildlife habitat being cleared. Have there been any plans drawn up to show the effects of that kind of harvesting?”

“I'm sure I couldn't say. My part, as you must know, is to persuade industry, foreign or domestic, to move into the state of Louisiana to increase revenues and improve the quality of life for people.” The senator, catching sight of Reid moving to join them, saw his way out. In sonorous tones he finished, “People, that's my concern, first and always. For the rest of it, I suggest you talk to Sayers here. As the man who holds the major interest in the mill, he's the one who will have to make the final decision.”

The senator divided a stiff nod between the two of them, then moved off toward an aide who waited for him. Reid watched him with a considering look in his eyes before he turned back to Cammie.

“I suppose you can guess what that was about,” she said.

“I'm afraid so.”

Her voice low, yet shaded with anger, she said, “Why didn't you tell me?”

It was a long moment before Reid answered. “I had other things on my mind. Besides, there isn't a lot to tell at this point. I'll be glad to go into it as much as you like, but not here. Maybe over dinner?”

A restaurant, she thought, would be neutral ground, and as such, much better than her borrowed apartment. To be alone with him did not seem like a good idea at the moment. She said simply, “Where?”

He pushed back his sleeve to glance at the flat gold watch on his wrist. “We have reservations at Louis Sixteen, just about now.”

The Louis XVI, somber and elegant in red and gold, was one of the city's many bastions of French Continental cuisine. Their waiter belonged to that professional, definitely nonservile, tradition found in only two places on the North American continent, New York and New Orleans. Cammie appreciated the thought Reid had obviously given to the evening. She also enjoyed, in a distracted fashion, the various courses of the superb meal as it was put before them. Regardless, her greatest concern was the paper mill.