Todd Simmons, soon to be Mitch’s brother-in-law, looked pleased, as well he might, considering the commission his fledgling real-estate firm would collect on the sale. Mitch noticed that Todd’s hand trembled a little as he extended it to seal the agreement.
Inwardly, Mitch was wondering what had possessed him to meet the outrageous asking price on this monster of a house within fifteen minutes of walking through the front door. He decided that he’d done it for Ivy, his half sister. Since she was going to marry Simmons, the sale would benefit her, too.
“When can I move in?” Mitch asked, resting against the railing again and gazing far out to sea. His hotel room was comfortable, but he had spent too much of his life in places like it; he wanted to live in a real house.
“Now, if you’d like,” Simmons answered promptly. He seemed to vibrate with suppressed excitement, as though he’d like to jump up in the air and kick his heels together. “In this case, the closing will be little more than a formality. I don’t mind telling you that Rosamond Dallas’s daughter is anxious to unload the place.”
The famous name dropped on Mitch’s weary mind with all the grace of a boxcar tumbling into a ravine. “I thought Miss Dallas was dead,” he ventured.
A sad expression moved in Todd’s eyes as he shook his head and drew a package of gum from the pocket of his blue sports jacket. He was good-looking, with dark hair and a solid build; he and Ivy would have beautiful children.
“Rosamond has Alzheimer’s disease,” he said, and he gave a long sigh before going on. “It’s a shame, isn’t it? She made all those great movies, married all those men, bought this house and half a dozen others just as impressive all over the United States, and she winds up staring at the walls over at Seaview Convalescent, with the whole world thinking she’s dead. The hell of it is, she’s only forty-seven.”
“My God,” Mitch whispered. He was thirty-seven himself; it was sobering to imagine having just ten good years left. Rosamond, at his age, had been at the height of her powers.
Todd ran a hand through his dark hair and worked up a grin. “Things change,” he said philosophically. “Time moves on. Rosamond doesn’t have any use for a house like this now, and the taxes have been a nightmare for her daughter.”
Mitch was already thinking like a journalist, even though he’d sworn that he wouldn’t write again for at least a year. He was in the beginning stages of burnout, he had told his agent just that morning. He’d asked Ivan to get him an extension on his current contract, in fact. Now, six hours later, here he was thinking in terms of outlines and research material. “Rosamond Dallas must have earned millions, Todd. She was a star in every sense of the word. Why would the taxes on this place put a strain on anybody in her family?”
Todd unwrapped the stick of gum, folded it, accordion-fashion, into his mouth and tucked the papers into his pocket. “Rosamond had six husbands,” he answered after a moment or two of sad reflection. “Except for Riley Thompson—he’s a country and western singer and pays for her care over at Seaview—they were all jerks with a talent for picking the worst investments and the slowest horses.”
“But the profit from selling this house—”
“That will go to clear up the last of Rosamond’s personal debts. Shay won’t see a dime of it.”
“Shay. The daughter?”
Todd nodded. “You’ll meet her tonight. She’s Ivy’s best friend, works for Marvin Reese.”
Mitch couldn’t help smiling at the mention of Reese, even though he was depressed that someone could make a mark on the world the way Rosamond Dallas had and have nothing more to pass on to her daughter than a pile of debts. Ivy had written him often about her employer, who was something of a local celebrity and the owner of one of the largest new-and-used car operations in the state of Washington. Television commercials were Reese’s claim to fame; he had a real gift for the ridiculous.
Mitch’s smile faded away. “Did Shay grow up in this house, by any chance?” he asked. He couldn’t think why the answer should interest him, but it did.
“Like a lot of show people, Rosamond was something of a vagabond. Shay lived here when she was a little girl, on and off. Later, she spent a lot of time in Swiss boarding schools. Went to college for a couple of years, somewhere in Oregon, and that’s when she met—” Todd paused and looked sheepish. “Damn, I’ve said too much and probably bored you to death in the process. I should be talking about the house. I can have the papers ready by tonight, and I’ll leave my keys with you.”
He removed several labeled keys from a ring choked with similar ones and they clinked as they fell into Mitch’s palm. “Ivy mentioned dinner, didn’t she? You’ll be our guest, of course.”
Mitch nodded. Todd thanked him, shook his hand again and left.
When he was alone, Mitch went outside to explore the grounds, wondering at himself. He hadn’t intended to settle down. Certainly he hadn’t intended to buy a house. He had come to town to see Ivy and meet her future husband, to relax and maybe fish and sail a little, and he’d agreed to look at this house only because he’d been intrigued by his sister’s descriptions of it.
Out back he discovered an old-fashioned gazebo, almost hidden in tangles of climbing rosebushes. Pungently fragrant pink and yellow blossoms nodded in the dull, late morning sunshine, serenaded by bees. The realization that he would have to hire a gardener as well as a housekeeper made Mitch shake his head.
He rounded the gazebo and found another surprise, a little girl’s playhouse, painted white. The miniature structure was perfectly proportioned, with real cedar shingles on the roof and green shutters at the windows. Mitch Prescott, hunter of war criminals, infiltrator of half a dozen chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, trusted confidant of Colombian cocaine dealers, was enchanted.
He stepped nearer the playhouse. The paint was peeling and the shingles were loose and there were, he could see through the lilliputian front window, repairs to be made on the inside as well. Still, he smiled to imagine how Kelly, his seven-year-old daughter, would love to play here, in this strangely magical place, spinning the dreams and fantasies that came so easily to children.
Shay stormed out of Marvin’s office muttering, barely noticing Ivy, who sat at her computer terminal in the center of the reception room. “Bees…a half ton of sugar…that could kill me.…”
“Todd sold the house!” Ivy blurted as Shay fumbled for the knob on her office door.
She stopped cold, the storyboards for the outrageous commercials under one arm, and stared at Ivy, at once alarmed and hopeful. “Which house?” she asked in a voice just above a whisper.
Ivy’s aquamarine eyes were shining and her elegant cheekbones were tinted pink. “Yours—I mean, your mother’s. Oh, Shay, isn’t it wonderful? You’ll be able to clear up all those bills and Todd will make the biggest commission ever!”
Shay forgot her intention to lock herself up in her office and wallow in remorse for the rest of the afternoon. She set the storyboards aside and groped with a tremulous hand for a chair to draw up to Ivy’s desk. Of course she had been anxious to see that wonderful, magnificent burden of a house sold, but the reality filled her with a curious sense of sadness and loss. “Who bought it? Who could have come up with that kind of money?” she asked, speaking more to the cosmos than to Ivy.
Her friend sat up very straight in her chair and beamed proudly. “My brother, Mitch.”
Shay had a headache. She pulled in a steadying breath and tried to remember all that Ivy had told her, over the years, about her brother. He and Ivy did not share the same mother; in fact, Mitch and his stepmother avoided each other as much as possible. Shay had had the impression that Mitch Prescott was very successful, in some nebulous and unconventional way, and she remembered that he had once been married and had a child, a little girl if she remembered correctly. Probably because of the rift between himself and Ivy’s mother, he had rarely