Three
There wasn’t any choice. Sitting in her car, watching Andy’s loping stride carry him off toward the marina, Vanessa knew exactly what she had to do. Swallow her poison quickly, before she had time to think about how bitter it would taste going down.
She dug her cell phone from her purse. Stared at the keypad so long that the numbers swam before her eyes. Closed her eyes until the crashing wave of dread passed.
This isn’t about you, Ms. Pragmatist lectured. Think about Lew. Think about how disruptive and upsetting this could end up for everyone at Twelve Oaks if an investigator started hanging around, grilling staff and residents.
She didn’t have Tristan’s cell number, but she did have several Eastwick hotels in her phone’s directory. How hard could he be to find?
Not very, as it turned out.
On her second attempt, the receptionist at the Hotel Marabella put her straight through to his suite. She didn’t have a chance to second think, or to do any more than draw a deep breath and silently wail, why the Marabella? She preferred to think he’d have chosen one of the big chains instead of the tasteful Mediterranean-style boutique hotel whose restaurant was among her favorites.
Perhaps his secretary chose it. Or a travel agent. Business executives did not make their own—
“Hello.”
Vanessa started so violently she almost dropped her phone.
By the time she’d recovered and compelled her heart to stop racing and pressed the tiny handset to her ear, he was repeating his greeting and asking if anyone was there. His voice was unmistakable, a deep, thick drawl colored by his years down under. That color matched the sun-tinged ends of his rich brown hair, the deep tan of his skin, but not the alert intensity of his eyes.
She felt a ripple of hot-cold response, as if those eyes were on her again. Those eyes and his mouth—
“It’s Vanessa,” she said quickly, staunching that memory. “Vanessa Thorpe.”
Silence.
“I wasn’t expecting to find you in.”
“You weren’t expecting …” he murmured, slightly puzzled, slightly mocking. “And yet you called?”
“I thought you might be out for dinner. I intended leaving a message.”
“A different message to the one you left me with earlier?”
Vanessa counted to five slowly. He knew she’d been spitting mad when she ordered him out of her house. And he knew why, blast him. She was not going to let that cynical taunt get to her. She had to do this. For Lew. For Andy. For her own guilty conscience. “I need to talk to you.”
“I’m listening.”
“I meant, in person.”
In the next beat of silence she could almost feel his stillness, that hard-edged intensity fixed on her from fifty-odd miles away. Ridiculous, she knew, but that didn’t stop a tight feeling of apprehension from gripping her stomach.
“Tomorrow?” he asked.
With a full schedule of committee meetings plus a trip to Lexford to see how Lew was doing after today’s dramas, her only free hour was first thing in the morning. And the idea of inviting him to her home, or arranging to meet for breakfast somewhere else, caused every cell in her body to scream in protest. Breakfast meant straight out of bed. Breakfast also meant a long night of worry and endless opportunity to change her mind.
“Tonight would suit me better.” Vanessa closed her eyes and tried to block out how bad an idea this might turn out to be. “Do you have plans?”
“I have a dinner reservation downstairs.”
“I’m sure they will hold your table.”
“I’m sure they would,” he countered. “If I asked them to.”
She sucked in a breath, but she couldn’t suck back her sharp retort. “Are you deliberately trying to antagonize me?”
“I don’t think either one of us has to try. Do you?”
Okay. So he wasn’t going to make this easy, but that didn’t mean she would give up. “Are you dining alone?”
“Why do you ask? Would you like to break bread with me?”
“I would like,” she enunciated, after ungritting her teeth, “to speak to you. If you’re dining alone, I thought that may provide an opportunity without intruding on your plans.”
Another pause in which she could almost hear him sizing up the implications of her request. Then, he said, “I’ll have the restaurant add another setting.”
“Just a chair,” she said quickly. “I won’t be eating so please don’t wait for me. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“I look forward to it, duchess.”
Tristan had drawled that closing line with a liberal dose of mockery, but he did look forward to Vanessa’s arrival. Very much. He couldn’t wait to see how she explained her rapid turnaround from get out of my house to I need to talk. He could have made it easy on her by changing his dinner booking and meeting her downstairs in the lounge bar or the more private library. He could have offered to drive out to her house, to save her the trip into town.
But after witnessing her rendezvous at Old Poynton, knowing she’d rushed helter-skelter to her lover right after scoffing at the letter’s allegations, he was in no mood for making anything easy for Vanessa.
So. She wanted to talk. Most likely to spin a story concocted during that intense seaside heart-to-heart. He couldn’t imagine her confessing but she might attempt to explain away her secret meetings with lover boy. Whichever way she played it, he was ready.
This time she wouldn’t catch him unawares.
This time he would keep his hormones on ice.
Resisting the urge to check his watch, he poured a second glass of wine and pushed his dinner plate aside. He’d requested a table at the end of the terrace, where, in secluded peace, he could pretend to enjoy the food and the shimmer of reflected moonlight off the darkened waters of the Sound. Where he wouldn’t be scanning the door for the distinctive shimmer of moonlight-blond hair.
Still, he sensed her arrival several minutes later. Without turning he knew her footsteps and felt the quickening of anticipation in his blood. When he started to rise from his chair, she waved him back down. Her warm smile was all for the waiter who fussed over seating her—not opposite but catercorner to him.
“So madam, too, can enjoy the view.”
She thanked Josef and while he took her order for some ridiculous froufrou coffee, Tristan kicked back in his chair and tried not to notice that she still wore the same pink sundress.
Because she hadn’t yet gone home? Because she’d spent all this time at Old Poynton … doing what?
Only walking? Only talking?
The questions—and the possibility in the answers—snarled through him, sharp and mean. For a long moment he continued to stare at her, waiting for Josef to leave. Waiting for her to acknowledge his presence. Waiting for the impulse to ask those questions to pass so he could speak with some civility.
He took a sip from his very civilized sauvignon blanc. “Traffic bad?”
She’d been fussing with her purse, setting it just so on the table, but she looked up sharply.
“You said an hour.”
“Have I held you up?” Her expression was polite, her