Chapter 1 #2
He wasn’t tanned. I wasn’t sure if I’d expected him to be, and in any case, it didn’t matter because his skin had a healthy glow. It, too, was textured—rougher where he shaved, creased where he squinted, laughed or frowned—and there was a small scar on his cheekbone that gave him a mysterious air.
But it was his eyes that grabbed me. They were pale green, almost to the point of luminescence.
I’d never seen any like them. On the one hand they were eerie, on the other enticing.
They probed with an intensity that frightened me, then soothed in the next blink.
I tried to look away, but couldn’t. Nor could I control the sudden, wild beating of my heart.
“Jill Moncrieff?”
His deep voice cut through the thunder of the sea and the echo of the wind to say my name, and I’ve never been more grateful for anything in my life. For, God help me, in those few short moments when I’d been bound by his gaze, I’d forgotten who I was.
A single, hard swallow brought me back. “Yes,” I said with all the composure I could muster in a matter of seconds. I extended my hand. “You must be Peter Hathaway.”
His hand was large and warm, enveloping mine with the same confidence that surrounded the rest of him, but I didn’t have long to dwell on it when he did something that drove all other thoughts from my mind.
He smiled.
Actually it was more of a half smile, a lopsided curve of his mouth. It held surprise, smug pleasure and utter maleness, reflecting the thoughts I assumed to be swirling through his head. It was a dangerous smile if ever there was one, but for the life of me I couldn’t look away.
“So you’re Judge Madigan’s daughter,” he announced in a soft, self-satisfied tone of voice.
Still holding my hand, he made a slow sweep of my body, and while his gaze was more curious than insolent, I had to work not to squirm.
He was a man with far greater experience than I possessed, and I felt vulnerable.
Reacting against that, I retrieved my hand, steadied my chin in a self-assured manner and said quietly, “That’s right.”
“You don’t look the way I expected you would.” His eyes caught mine again, this time in mild challenge.
“What had you expected?”
“A dog.”
I couldn’t believe he’d said that. “Excuse me?”
“I figured that being a Madigan heiress, there’d have to be something desperately wrong with your looks for you to be stashed away up here.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my looks.”
The lazy half smile came again, along with an appreciative, “So I see.” Then the smile faded. “I’d also expected someone a little older. I met your brother at a party not long ago. It turned out he went to Penn with a high school buddy of mine. You must be fifteen years younger than us.”
Slowly I shook my head. “If that was meant as a compliment, you missed. I wouldn’t want to be twenty-five again for the world.”
“Why not?”
“When I was twenty-five, my husband died. My career was in limbo. I went through a rough time.” In a chilly reminder of those dark days, the wind chose that moment to gust through the door.
“That, was six years ago, Mr. Hathaway,” I said, holding back the hair that wanted to blow into my eyes.
“I’ve come a long way since then. I’m quite happy with my life now, except for this little problem with Cooper.
” I stood back. “It’s chilly. Why don’t you come in and let me close the door? ”
I wasn’t sure whether I’d shocked him with my blunt revelation about Adam.
I hoped so. It bothered me that he should think me an innocent, when I wasn’t.
While I wouldn’t call my life in Maine as sophisticated as the one I’d once known, I’d probably seen more hardship and pain—and more joy—in the past ten years than any of my classmates at Penn.
Keeping his feelings well to himself now, much as I would have expected from a smooth city boy, Peter Hathaway stepped over my threshold and into the living room.
Instantly the room seemed smaller than usual, which was absurd, I told myself.
Cooper was every bit as tall as Peter Hathaway, perhaps even broader.
When a little voice inside me whispered something about an aura of virility surrounding Peter, I tuned it out.
“Have a seat,” I suggested, hoping that if his body were folded I wouldn’t feel as threatened.
But he started to wander around the room, pausing before a table here, a shelf there, to study my work.
“Your mother said you were a potter.” He examined a pair of candlesticks that were irrevocably entwined.
“She said that your things are shown in some of the best galleries in New York, but that you choose to work here for the sake of concentration.”
“Mother would say that,” I remarked, though not unkindly. I’d mellowed enough over the years to allow my family its excuses for what they considered to be my bizarre behavior.
“Is it untrue?” he asked. His back was to me, but I could see him touch a small vase that looked all the more delicate in contrast to his long, blunt-tipped fingers.
“To some extent. Life here is simpler than it is in the city, and in that sense it’s easier to concentrate.
Then again, there are many artists who work in city garrets and do just fine.
Where one lives is a matter of personal choice.
I’ve chosen to live here for reasons that have nothing to do with concentration. ”
He did turn then, and I half wished he hadn’t. Facing him head-on, I suffered that same inner jolt that I’d felt earlier. Something about the way he looked at me made my heart catch.
“If I asked what those reasons are,” he said, “would you tell me?”
I forced myself to breathe normally. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not here to talk about me. You’re here to talk about Cooper.”
“Then why isn’t Cooper here?” he asked, with a blunt and simple logic that put me quickly on the spot—which was where, when I thought of it, I’d felt from the moment Peter Hathaway had appeared at my door.
“Cooper isn’t here,” I said slowly, wishing all the while that Peter Hathaway was short, fat and balding, “because I wanted to talk with you first. There are certain things you should understand before you meet Cooper.”
Peter slipped both hands into the pockets of his slacks, drawing the fine gray fabric more snugly across his hips. I don’t know why, but my eyes fell, then bobbed back up on a silent command, and I prayed that my face didn’t look as warm as it felt.
Gesturing beseechfully toward a chair, I again urged him to sit. “Please.” When he seemed determined to simply stand there, so tall and straight and beautifully masculine, looking at me, I tried a different diversion. “Did they serve you anything on the plane? Have you had lunch?”
“I didn’t fly. I drove up.”
That surprised me. “All the way from New York?”
“I got an early start,” he explained. “I enjoy driving. I don’t get to do it enough.” He paused for an instant before adding, “Besides, the alternative was flying into Boston and switching to a small commuter plane. They can be harrowing. I avoid them at all costs.”
Big city, big name, big bucks, afraid of flying?
I had trouble believing that. If his reputation was indicative of his practice, he flew all the time.
I wasn’t quite sure whether he was trying to charm me into forgetting the danger of his smile by presenting me with a flaw, but if so, I wasn’t buying.
“It would have been faster to fly,” I told him. “I’m prepared to spend whatever it takes to clear Cooper’s name. Still, the well isn’t bottomless. If I’m paying you for travel time—”
“You’re not,” he cut in, looking around again. “If I choose to take the longer route, I cover myself. Besides, I’m not on retainer yet. I haven’t agreed to take this case.”
“Oh.” Thanks for nothing, Mom. “I’m sorry. I was misinformed.” And for that I’d offered my house for the weekend? Thanks for nothing, Mom.
Peter Hathaway didn’t look at all disturbed.
“No problem,” he said and crossed to the small table that Adam and I had picked up so long ago in Nanny Walker’s attic.
Like most of the furniture in the room, it was a local relic.
Like most, it had been stripped, sanded and restained.
I loved doing things like that, loved thinking of the artisan who had originally made a piece, loved caressing the curves he or she had so painstakingly carved.
After all, I was an artist, too, a partner in obsession.
This particular table was a round mahogany piece that stood on an intricately crafted pedestal and had delicate fluting around its rim.
On its surface was a small, gently swirling candy dish of my own making and two photographs, each mounted in strikingly unusual metal frames made by my friend, Hans, who lived in Bangor.
Peter raised the larger of the two. It was a picture of Adam and his crew in front of the Free Reign. “Who’s who?” he asked.
Knowing that the sooner he started learning names, the better, I crossed to where he stood and moved a light finger over the glass. “Adam … Cooper … Jack … Tonof … Benjie.”
“Was that the pecking order?”
“Pretty much so. Cooper was second in command to Adam. Jack and Tonof were experienced men who worked hard but had no stake in the endeavor other than what money they earned. Benjie is Cooper’s brother.”
“He’s just a kid.”
“He was fourteen when this was taken. He’s twenty now.”
Peter studied the picture a little longer, then set it back on the table and lifted the smaller one.
It was of Adam and me, taken during the first year of our marriage.
Adam hugged me from behind in the waist-up shot.
We were windblown, two blond beach bums, scantily clad, looking tanned, carefree, immortal.
“He was a handsome man,” Peter commented.
“Yes.”
“How did he die?”