Since she hadn’t yet started her makeup, Stella was free to press her fingers to her eyes. “How? How do you know that kind of thing? Nobody knows that kind of thing.”
“I was a bookseller for years, remember. I read a lot. I don’t know why I retain the weird stuff. But anyway, it’s a holiday party here—her house. And you know she’ll look amazing. And now he’ll show up with some woman and screw everything up.”
“I don’t actually think there’s anything to screw up at this point.”
Hayley tugged at her hair in frustration. “But therecould be. I just know it. You watch, you just watch them tonight and see if you don’t get the vibe.”
“All right, I will. But now I’ve got to get the kids out of the tub and into bed. Then I have to get dressed, and strap on my sexy shoes with the single goal of driving Logan crazy.”
“Want a hand? With the kids, not with driving Logan crazy. Lily’s already sleeping.”
“No, you’ll get wet or wrinkled, and you look fantastic. I wish I could wear that shade of red. Talk about sexy.”
Hayley looked down at the short siren-red slip dress. “You don’t think it’s too . . .”
“No, I think it’s exactly.”
“Well, I’ll go down, see if I can give David a hand with the caterer and all. Then I can get his take on the outfit. He rules in fashion.”
Roz was already downstairs, checking details and second-guessing herself. Maybe she should have opened the third-floor ballroom and held the party there. It was a gorgeous space, so elegant and graceful. But the main level, with its hive of smaller rooms, the fires burning, was warmer and more friendly somehow.
Space wasn’t a problem, she assured herself as she checked the positioning of tables, chairs, lamps, candles. And she liked throwing open the rooms this way, knowing people would wander from here to there, admiring the home she loved.
It was a clear night, so they could spill onto the terraces, too. There were heaters if it got too chilly, and more tables, more seating, more candles and all those festive lights in the trees, the luminaries along the garden paths.
And you’d think, for heaven’s sake, that it was the first party she’d given in her life.
Been awhile, though, since she’d held anything this expansive. Because of that, the attrition rate on her guest list had been very low. She was going to be packed.
Avoiding the caterers and extra staff bustling around, she slipped outside. Yes, the lights were lovely, and fun, she decided. And she liked the poinsettia tree she’d created out of dozens of white plants.
Harper House was designed for entertaining, she reminded herself. She’d been shirking her duty there, and denying herself, she supposed, the pleasure of socializing with people she enjoyed.
She turned when she heard the door open. David stepped out, holding two flutes of champagne.
“Hello, beautiful. Can I interest you in a glass of champagne?”
“You can. Though I should be inside, helping with the madhouse.”
“Under control.” He tapped his glass to hers. “Another twenty minutes, and it’ll be perfect. And look at us! Aren’t we gorgeous?”
She laughed, slipped her hand into his. “You always are.”
“And you, my treasure.” Still holding her hand, he stepped back. “You just shimmer.”
She’d chosen a gown of dull silver in a long, narrow column with an off-the-shoulder neckline that would showcase her great-grandmother’s rubies.
She brushed her fingertips over the platinum necklace with its spectacular ruby drops. “I don’t have many opportunities to wear the Harper rubies. This seemed the night for them.”
“And a treat they are for the eyes plus they do amazing things for your collarbone. But I was talking about you, my incandescent beauty. Why don’t we run away to Belize?”
Champagne and David, the perfect combination to make her feel bubbly and relaxed. “I thought it was going to be Rio.”
“Not until Carnival. It’s going to be a wonderful party, Roz. You just put all the other crap out of your mind.”
“You read me, don’t you?” She shook her head, staring into the gardens as she sipped champagne. “Last time I threw one of these holiday bashes, I walked upstairs into the bedroom to change my bracelet because the clasp was loose, and what do I find but my husband nibbling on one of our guests instead of the canapés.”
She took a longer, deeper sip. “A singularly mortifying moment in my life.”
“Hell with that. You handled it, didn’t you? I still don’t know how you managed to step back out, leave them there, to get through the rest of the party and wait until everyone was gone before you pitched the son of a bitch out on his ear.”
His voice heated up on the rant, his fury for her lighting little fires. “You’ve got balls of steel, Roz. And I mean that in the best possible way.”
“It was self-serving, not courageous or ballsy.” She shrugged it off, or tried to. “Causing a scene with a house full of guests would only have been more humiliating.”
“In your place, I’d’ve scratched both of them blind, then chased them out the door brandishing one of your great-great . . . however many greats-granddaddy’s muskets.”
She let out a little sigh, sipped again. “That would’ve been satisfying, and damn if I don’t wish I’d thought of the musket after the guests had gone. Well, we didn’t let him spoil that evening, and we won’t let him spoil this one.”
She polished off the champagne and turned to David with the determined look of a woman prepared for battle. “Let’s get the rest of these candles lit, put some music on. I’m ready for a party.”
YES,IT WAS good to open the house again. To have wine and music, good food, good friends. She listened to snippets of gossip, political debates, discussions on sports and the arts as she moved from group to group, from room to room.
She hooked her arm through her old friend Will Dooley’s, who was also Stella’s father, and Roz’s landscaper, Logan Kitridge’s future father-in-law. “You slipped by me.”
“Just got here.” He brushed his lips over her cheek. “Jo kept changing her shoes. She just went upstairs with Hayley. Said she had to peek at the baby.”
“I’ll find her. Lose your fiancée, Logan?”
“She’s everywhere.” He shrugged, sipped from his pilsner. “Woman can’t rest until she’s checked every detail personally. Nice party, Roz.”
“Oh, you hate parties.”
Now Logan grinned, a quick grin that added charm to his rugged looks. “A lot of people. But the food’s first-rate, the beer’s cold, and my date’s the most beautiful woman in the world. Tough to complain. Don’t tell her daddy, but I plan to lure her out to the gardens later to neck.”
He winked at Will, then shifted his gaze. “Your Dr. Carnegie just came in. Seems to be looking for you—or somebody.”
“Oh?” Roz glanced around, and those expressive eyebrows lifted. He’d worn a suit, stone gray, that flattered his lean build. He’d gotten a haircut since the last time she’d seen him, she noted, and was looking a little moreGQ than professorial.
She could admit, to herself at least, that it was a treat to study him either way.
Still, he seemed slightly befuddled with the crowd, and shook his head when one of the efficient servers offered him a glass from a tray of champagne.
“Excuse me just a minute,” she said to Will and Logan.
She started to wind her way through the room, and broke her stride when his gaze skimmed over, then locked on her face.
She felt a little bump under her heart, and a quickening of pulse she found both baffling and embarrassing.
He just hones in, she thought. Those eyes just zeroed right on in so she felt—anyone would feel—that she was the only person in the room. A good trick in a space jammed with people and noise, and just a little disconcerting.
But her expression was easy and friendly as she walked to him.
“I’m so glad you could come.”
“When you throw a party, you mean it. I could see the lights from a mile away. You don’t actually know all these people, do you?”
“Never seen them before in my life. What can I get you to drink?”
“Club soda, lime.”
“There’s a bar set up over here.” To guide him, she laid a hand on his arm. “Let’s get you fixed up.”
“Thanks. Listen, I have something for you. A gift.”
He dug into his pocket as they crossed to the bar, then offered her a small wrapped box.
“That’s completely unnecessary, and awfully sweet.”
“Just a thanks for bailing me out with the gift for my niece.” He ordered his drink. “You look . . .amazing is the word that springs to mind, withspectacular coming right behind it.”
“Thank you.”
“From head.” His gaze skimmed down to her silver-heeled sandals—and the ruby-red toenails. “To toe.”
“My mama always said a woman wasn’t groomed unless her toenails were painted. It’s one of the few pieces of advice she gave me I agreed with. Should I open this now?”
He’d barely glanced at the rubies, though his amateur antiquer’s eye judged them to be vintage. But the toes. The toes were terrific.
“What?”
“The gift.” She smiled. It was hard not to be pleased, and a little bit smug, when a man was enraptured by your feet. “Should I open it now?”
“Oh, no, I wish you wouldn’t. If you open it later, and you hate it, you’ll have time to prepare a polite lie.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m opening it now.”
She tugged off the ribbon, lifted the top. Inside was a miniature clock, framed in silver filigree. “It’s lovely. It’s really lovely.”
“Antiquing’s a hobby of mine. Makes sense, considering. I figured with this house, you’d enjoy old things. There’s an inscription on the back. It got to me.”
She turned it over and read.
L, Count the hours. N
“Lovely, and romantic. It’s wonderful, Mitch, and certainly more than I deserve for picking out a toy.”
“It made me think of you.” When she lifted her head, he shook his. “That put a cynical look in your eye. But fact’s fact. I saw it, thought of you.”
“Does that happen often?”
“My thinking of you?”
“No, thinking of someone and buying her a charming gift.”
“From time to time. Not in some time, actually. Does it happen often on your end?”
She smiled a little. “Not in some time. Thank you, very much. I want to put this upstairs. Why don’t I introduce you to . . . oh, there’s Stella. Nobody can steer you through a party better than our Stella.”
“Mitch.” Stella held out a hand for him. “It’s good to see you again.”
“And you. You’re blooming,” he said. “It must be love.”
“I can confirm that.”
“And how are your boys?”
“They’re great, thanks. Conked out upstairs, and . . . oh.” She broke off when she saw the little clock. “Isn’t that sweet? So romantic and female.”
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Roz agreed. “It was a gift, for a very small favor.”
“You wouldn’t say small if you’d been on the receiving end of the phone call I got from my sister and my niece,” Mitch told her. “I’m not only officially forgiven, I’m currently enjoying favorite-uncle status.”
“Well then, obviously I deserve this. Stella, show Mitch around, will you? I just want to put this upstairs.”
“Sure.” And Stella noted the way Mitch’s gaze followed Roz out of the room.
“One question before we make the rounds. Is she seeing anyone?”
“No, she’s not.”
He grinned as he took Stella’s arm. “How about that?”
Roz mingled her way to the foyer, then started upstairs. It reminded her that she’d walked up these stairs at another party, with the voices and the music and lights behind her. And she’d stepped into the end of a relationship.
She wasn’t naive. She knew very well Mitch was asking her if she was interested in beginning a relationship, and was laying some groundwork so she would be. What was strange was that her answer wasn’t a flat no. What was strange, Roz thought as she walked to her bedroom, was not knowing the answer.
She slipped into the room to set the romantic little clock on her dresser. She couldn’t stop the smile as she traced the frame. A very thoughtful gift, she thought, and yes, her cynical side added that it was a very clever gift. Then again, a woman who’d been through two marriages was bound to have a healthy dose of cynicism.
A relationship with him might be interesting, even entertaining, and God knew she was due for some passion in her life. But it would also be complicated, possibly intense. And potentially sticky with the work she’d hired him to do.
She was allowing the man to write a book that involved her family history, and would certainly involve herself to some extent. Did she really want to become intimate with someone who could, if things burned out, slap her, and her family, in print?
Her experience with Bryce warned her that when things went bad, things got worse.
A lot to consider, she mused. Then she raised her eyes to the mirror.
She saw not only herself, her skin flushed, her eyes bright from her own thoughts, but the pale figure behind her.
Her breath caught, but she didn’t jolt. She didn’t spin around. She simply stood as she was, her eyes linked with Amelia’s in the glass.
“Twice in so many weeks,” she said calmly. “You, I imagine, would tell me to brush him off. You don’t like men much, do you, Amelia? Boys, yes, children, but men are a different kettle. No one but a man puts that kind of anger in a woman. I know. Was it one of my blood who put that anger in you?”
There was no answer, none expected.
“Let me finish this one-sided conversation by saying I have to think for myself, decide for myself, just as I always have. If I let Mitchell into my life, into my bed, the consequences, and the pleasure, will be on me.”
She took a slow breath. “But I’ll make you one promise. Whatever I do, or don’t, we won’t stop looking for the answers for you. Not now that we’ve started.”
Even as the figure began to fade, Roz felt something brush her hair, like a soft stroke of fingers that warmed even as it chilled.
She had to steady herself, pressing both hands to the top of the dresser. Then she meticulously freshened her lipstick, dabbed a bit more scent on her throat. And started back to the party.
She thought a ghostly caress would be enough of a shock for one night, but she had another, harder shock, as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
Bryce Clerk stood in her foyer.
The rage spewed through her, hot and horrid, and had a vision of herself flashing through her brain. Of leaping down the stairs, spitting out all the bitter insult and fury as she beat him senseless, and threw him out the door.
