sighed, placated by his off-the-cuff comment. She looked tired as she ran one slender hand through the copper and gold strands of her long hair and blinked her wide cornflower blue eyes. “Could we start over here?” She smiled, stepping around her brother to enter the penthouse. And then, without waiting for an answer, she cleared her throat and began again. “Hello, handsome. Rough trip?”
Nathan shook his head distractedly. The grandfather clock in the living room chimed a soft reminder of the hour. “Pat, I’m going insane while you make small talk. What’s the matter with Mallory, and where the hell is she?”
Pat stood on tiptoe to kiss her brother’s freshly shaven chin. “Relax,” she said gently. “Mallory is okay. After they released her from the hospital, I took her out to the island so she could have some peace and quiet.”
He took his sister’s arm, ushered her somewhat roughly toward the living room. “Why was she in the hospital, damn it?” he snapped, impatient and scared.
Pat settled herself on the suede sofa and crossed her shapely legs. “She collapsed on the set last night, Nathan, and they called an ambulance. Somebody from the show got in touch with me and I cabled you as soon as I’d seen Mallory and talked to the doctor and everything.”
Nathan stiffened, then leaned back against the long teakwood bar Mallory had bought in the Orient several years before, and folded his powerful arms in stubborn outrage. “I’ve been going out of my mind,” he growled. “They wouldn’t tell me anything at the hospital—”
Pat lowered her expressive blue eyes for a moment, regrouping, and then raised them intrepidly to her brother’s face again. “Mallory’s producer threatened them with mayhem if they gave out any information to anyone. Nathan, let it go.”
With a harsh motion of one hand, Nathan reclaimed the brown leather jacket he’d tossed into a chair earlier and slipped his arms into it. Mallory was his first concern—at the moment, his only concern.
As he turned to leave, Pat rose from the couch and caught his arm in one hand, gently but firmly. “Nathan, don’t hassle Mallory about the name thing or the soap opera, all right? She’s a wreck, frankly, and she doesn’t need it.”
“Right,” Nathan agreed crisply.
Pat reached up to touch his dark still-damp hair. “One more thing, love—stop worrying. Everything is okay.”
Nathan laughed, even though nothing in the whole damned world was funny, and walked away from his sister without looking back.
Mallory O’Connor loved the island house, though she didn’t get back to it much, now that she was working in Seattle. Often, the sturdy, simply furnished structure seemed to be the only real thing in her life. Now, standing in the huge old-fashioned kitchen, with snow drifting past the polished windows, she drew a deep breath and allowed herself to feel the sweet, singular embrace of the one place that was really home. Then, comforted, Mallory began selecting fragrant, splintery lengths of kindling from the box beside the big wood-burning stove to start a fire. She’d slept for a while after Pat had raced back to the city, and now she was pleasantly hungry.
Pride filled Mallory as the blaze caught and began to heat the spacious kitchen. Her mother had been right—there was a certain satisfaction in doing things the old way, a satisfaction she’d never found in the posh Seattle penthouse she and Nathan shared between his long and frequent absences.
Mallory sighed. She loved Nathan McKendrick with an intensity that had never abated in six tumultuous years of marriage, though she couldn’t have honestly said that she was happy. At twenty-seven, she was successful in her out-of-the-blue career, and Nathan, at thirty-four, was certainly successful in his. But there were elements missing from their relationship that caused Mallory to hunger even in the midst of opulence.
Money and recognition were pitiable substitutes for children, and the hectic pace most people considered glamorous only made Mallory’s heart cry out for simplicity and peace.
Outside, in the silent storm, Mallory’s Irish Setter, Cinnamon, began to howl for admission. Mallory smiled and went out onto the screened sun porch to welcome her furry and much-missed friend.
Cinnamon whimpered and squirmed in unabashed delight as Mallory greeted her with a pat on the head. “What do you say we just hide out here from now on, girl?” Mallory asked, only half in jest. “Nathan could go on with his concert tours—the darling of millions—and we’d exist on a diet of oysters and clams and wild blackberries.”
The dog abandoned its mistress to sniff and paw at a large, unopened sack of dog food leaning against the inside wall of the porch beside the screen door. Mallory began to pry at the stubborn stitching sealing the bag. “So much for living off the land,” she muttered.
While Cinnamon crunched happily away on the dried morsels wrested from that recalcitrant bag, Mallory heated canned chicken soup on the cookstove. There was very little in the house to eat, but shopping could wait until morning—Mallory would get her car out of the locked garage then, and drive to the small store on the other side of the island.
The wooden telephone on the kitchen wall, actually a modern replica of the old-fashioned crank phone, rang in pleasant tones, and Mallory left the soup simmering on the stove to answer. When she and Pat had arrived, there hadn’t been any phone service at all.
“Hello?”
Pleased feminine laughter sounded on the other end of the crackling line. “Mall, you are back!” cried Trish Demming, one of Mallory’s closest friends. “Thank heaven. I thought I’d fallen short in my dog-watching duties—I called Cinnamon until I was hoarse.”
Mallory smiled. “She’s here, Trish—safe and sound. I tried to call you, but the lines were dead.”
Trish’s voice was warm. “No problem. Actually, I should have looked at your house in the first place. Even when you’re gone, Cinnamon is always dashing over there. What’s going on, anyway? I thought you were all involved in taping that soap—er—daytime drama of yours, Mall.”
Mallory sighed. “I’m having an enforced vacation, Trish. Brad isn’t going to let me back on the set until I have a doctor’s permission.” She didn’t add that she was relieved to have a respite from the crazy schedule; Trish wouldn’t have understood.
There was a short silence while Trish considered the implications of Mallory’s statement. “Honey,” she said finally, concern ringing in her voice, “you’re not sick, are you? I mean, you must be, but is it serious?”
Mallory touched the top of the yellow-enameled wainscoting reaching halfway up the kitchen wall and frowned at the smudge of dust that lingered on her fingertip. “I’m just tired,” she assured her friend, glad that Trish couldn’t see the dark splotches of fatigue under her eyes or the telltale thinness of her already slender figure.
For a while, the two women discussed the plot line of “Tender Days, Savage Nights,” the first soap opera ever to be produced in Seattle. Brad Ranner, the show’s dynamic creator and chief stockholder, had brought it out from New York a year before, partly because of lower production costs and partly because of a desire to use more outdoor scenes. The spectacular vista of sea and mountains and lush woodlands gave the program unique appeal.
Most of the original cast had balked at leaving New York, however, and open auditions had been held in Seattle. On a whim, Mallory had gone, along with a horde of other applicants,
