Minister of Gossip, made a wounded little note of utterly false sympathy. “I know how you must feel. A nanny! After all the advantages you and Malcolm gave her, to be working as a, well, it’s really just a glorified baby-sitter, isn’t it? Malcolm must be turning over in his grave.”
Lacy laughed. “Surely he would understand. She’s quite young, after all. There’s plenty of time to pick a real career.”
Jennifer sniffed. “She’s only a few years younger than you, Lacy dear, and… Well, really, there’s no comparison, is there? Still, perhaps baby-sitting is a step up from her last job, which I hear was waitressing in Spandex tube tops at the Honeydew Café. Better babies than lewd old men with roaming hands, I suppose.”
Lacy bowed her elegant head, accepting the other woman’s sympathy. “I’m sure you’re right. But speaking of babies, have you seen the lovely Verengetti that was donated tonight? I can’t help picturing it in your conservatory. Not everyone has a room with enough scope and style to carry off a painting like that, but you…”
Gwen watched with a barely repressed fury as Lacy led Jennifer away. The nerve of those two self-satisfied snobs! Just exactly what did they think was wrong with being a nanny? Just because neither of them had any children… And as for the Honeydew Café—well, Jennifer was so tightly wrapped, so bony and repressed that people would pay her not to wear Spandex.
Besides, who had appointed them Gwen’s career counselors? She could spend a year laying sewers, if she wanted to. Or she could go be a rodeo clown. It wasn’t anyone’s business but her own.
She didn’t realize she hadn’t released Teddy’s fingers until he protested. “Hey,” he complained, tugging at them. “Ease up!”
She looked over at him, still half-blind with resentment. “Sorry,” she mumbled, trying to hold on to her composure. She felt more like screaming. She felt like yelling down at the departing Lacy that she didn’t give a flying flip what anybody thought of her choices—that her father might have turned Lacy into an obedient little robot-snob, but thank God he hadn’t managed to make one out of his daughter, too.
Teddy must have misinterpreted the intensity in her expression, because his eyes widened, and he made a clumsy move toward her, his lips already pursed for a big, juicy kiss. His awkward lunge pushed them both in front of the spotlight. Suddenly Gwen was truly blinded, this time by hot, white light. She realized that their writhing shadows must be projected on the podium backdrop below, like some X-rated shadow play.
A rather conspicuous method for announcing her arrival in town. The idea definitely had merit, she realized with a rising sense of defiant glee. She stopped struggling and let Teddy wrap his arms around her waist and lower his lips to hers.
Let’s see the Stepwitch handle this. Gwen had observed one indisputable fact through the years: if there was anything that made her frigid little stepmother uncomfortable, it was sex. In fact, she’d bet her trust fund that the widow Morgan, proud possessor of the Serene Gene, hadn’t had a real red-hot firecracker kiss in five years.
Maybe longer.
As Gwen guided Teddy Kilgore’s happily stunned face down toward her collarbone, she recalled what an icy, utterly passive, silently submissive wife Lacy Mayfair had been to Malcolm Morgan.
Heck, maybe ever.
She ran her hands up and down Teddy’s back with exaggerated strokes, knowing it would take broad gestures to attract adequate attention. Teddy responded enthusiastically. “Hot damn,” he murmured against her neck, and then set about taking advantage of his amazing good luck.
He wasn’t a bad kisser, actually. If she hadn’t had other things on her mind, she might even have enjoyed it. Her efforts were rewarded quickly. Within no more than a minute, she heard a few startled sounds from the people right below them. Slowly, as more and more people caught on, a rustle of curiosity moved through the crowd, silencing the normal hum of conversation.
Her fingers buried in Teddy’s black hair, Gwen twisted him a few inches to one side and peered over his shoulder into the audience below. Most of the people were watching the shadow show on the curtains, some smiling with incredulous amusement, some holding back shock with well-manicured, bejeweled fingers.
But one person had already figured it out. One face in the crowd was turned the other way, up toward the loft, up toward the spotlight. Staring straight at the actors.
It was Lacy, of course. Her beautiful face was pale, impassive, as always, but Gwen knew she must be horrified. Echoes came to her from years past. Her father’s voice. Disgusted. Cold.
Control yourself, Gwen, for God’s sake. Haven’t you ever noticed that Lacy never makes a spectacle of herself like that?
Gwen tilted Teddy’s shoulder out of the spotlight’s glare, and tossed her stepmother a broad grin and a wink.
Yeah, she thought wickedly. But I do.
CHAPTER TWO
TWO HOURS LATER, even though the auction was going beautifully, Lacy was done in. The band was still playing “baby” songs—a gimmick that had seemed quite amusing when they’d planned it a month ago.
“Baby, I’m Yours.” “Be My Baby.” “Baby, Come Back.” “Walking My Baby Back Home.” What had she been thinking? And all these paintings of babies—sleeping babies, nursing babies, crying babies, babies cradled lovingly in the arms of doting Madonnas. Suddenly Lacy found the whole thing completely exhausting.
Maybe it was Gwen’s absurdly rebellious arrival. Lacy could only imagine the resentment that had made the young woman put on such a display. When people had begun noticing the sexy silhouettes on the curtains, they had been transfixed—as Gwen had no doubt intended. For a moment Lacy had been stumped. How was such a flagrant piece of bad manners to be handled? Finally, though, she had decided to chuckle, announce that apparently her stepdaughter had joined a theater troupe, and then begin to softly, calmly applaud the performance. Other chuckles had followed, other applause had joined hers, and finally two sheepish young faces had peered down from the loft and grinned.
And, thank heaven, the crisis was averted.
Still, it had taken a lot out of her. Gwen had avoided her the rest of the evening, but Lacy knew a confrontation was inevitable before the night was over. Gwen never came back to the island unless she wanted something, and she never asked nicely. Lacy didn’t blame her. It must be galling to have to ask at all.
And yet, wasn’t it unfair of fate to ask her to handle Adam’s return and Gwen’s bitterness all in one night? Her head was aching, and she longed to go home, crawl under the covers and sleep for a week.
However, as chairman of the fund-raising committee, she couldn’t leave until the last bid was in the box, the last champagne glass drained, the final donor safely out the door. But she simply had to have a moment alone.
She looked around guiltily, like a prisoner scanning the tower watch. For once no one was bearing down on her, requiring a decision or requesting an opinion. Holding her breath, she eased into the small, remote stall at the end of the aisle, an area half hidden by a bank of lush ferns laced with small sparkling white lights. Formerly the stable’s breeding chute, it was too narrow to allow an effective display, so only two or three paintings hung on its padded walls. Most of the guests probably didn’t even know the space was there.
Grateful for the
