Always (9 page)

"I'm sorry," he replied, the words polite. "I stopped to say hello to Elinor."

"Oh!" Susan gave an exaggerated start of surprise. "Why, of course. Elinor, I didn't even see you there."

"Hello, Mrs. Stephens." The old biddy never saw anyone who couldn't further her social aspirations, Elinor thought, feeling furiously embarrassed.

Her heartsick anger with Cole seemed suddenly transparent, obvious to the most casual observer. And heaven knew that Susan Stephens wasn't casual when it came to noticing embarrassing tidbits about people. It would probably be all over town by tomorrow that Elinor Prescott had lost her heart to a playboy millionaire.

That would really give the tittletattlers something to chew over. Level-headed Elinor actually thinking she could attract a man as charming and sexy as Cole Whittier.

"I suppose you two are over here discussing council business." She laid a proprietary hand on Cole's arm. "Our Elinor's always such a conscientious girl."

"Thank you," Elinor responded her mouth feeling as dry as ashes.

"My goodness, Elinor," Susan uttered in a stage whisper as she spied Brad hesitantly approaching the table, "are you on a
date?
My, my. How exciting. We wouldn't want to interrupt anything."

"No, I—"

"Don't worry," Susan interrupted her as soon as Brad walked up. "We're leaving. You two lovebirds can go on back to yourselves."

Brad's mouth dropped open, fishlike, his pleasant face more worried than ever. The older woman tugged on Cole's arm to no avail.

Ignoring Susan, Cole studied Brad, appearing to give him his total attention for the first time. Elinor had seen that cool, assessing look on his face before, and she was glad men no longer challenged each other to duels.

It would be just like Cole Whittier to imagine that Brad presented a challenge to his supremacy. Apparently, he thought he had the right to stake as many claims as he wanted, no matter whose heart got bruised.

Just at that moment, Norell came up behind her mother. "Daddy's out front with the car . . ." She paused. "Oh, hello, Elinor. How nice to see you." The other woman smiled.

"Hello," Elinor mumbled, suddenly feeling as if she'd come out on the wrong side of a cat fight.

"Well, we'd better go if Daddy's out in front," Susan urged again, tittering. "The mayor's always a bear if he has to wait."

Elinor wanted to strangle Susan Stephens with the long strap of her too-glittery evening purse.

Bitterly aware of Cole still standing beside the table, his face like granite, his blue eyes glacial, Elinor felt her misery blossom into resentment.

She lifted her chin, smiling brilliantly up at the three beautiful people standing beside the table. "It was so nice of you all to stop by. I hope you have a lovely evening."

She couldn't be in love with Cole
. Elinor switched off the kitchen light and stepped into the hallway. That would be a really stupid move, and she prided herself on having common sense.

But her heart felt like last week's helium balloon. How could she let herself become so vulnerable so quickly? It wasn't as if she hadn't recognized his manipulative potential.

Cole smiled and people melted, men as well as women. Friendly, intelligent, and courteous, he had a charm that carried a knock-out punch. People liked him.

She had liked him. Even lusted after him.

The temptation must have been irresistible to him. Had he recognized from the start that she quivered like jelly when he was around? She'd tried so hard to hide her reaction.

Elinor was halfway up the stairs when a knock sounded at the door. She hesitated. Brad had long since hugged her good-bye and set off on his trip home to Julie. Even Daisy wouldn't drop by this late.

Whoever it was knocked again, more thunderously. Elinor turned and slowly came back down the stairs, her heart suddenly picking up a jungle drumbeat.

A swift glance through the narrow glass panels that bordered the door revealed Cole standing on her shadowy gallery.

Elinor felt her jaw firm in instinctive defense. The man didn't know when to quit. Thank goodness she hadn't yet changed out of her full chambray skirt and snug, scoop-necked blouse. A confrontation like this required more clothing than a nightie and robe.

Decisively, she flipped on the light switch, flooding the hall with a soft glow. Clicking the deadbolt back, Elinor wrenched the door open, her body suddenly trembling with anger.

It wasn't just that he'd come so close to seducing her. She recognized that a woman's body was considered fair game these days. But Cole had seriously threatened her heart.

He stood in her doorway, his shadowed face without expression.

"If you think I'm going to apologize for having dinner with the Stephenses, you're wrong," Cole said without preamble.

Elinor stared at him, a thousand words jumbling on her tongue. "I don't want you to apologize for anything," she said in a stiff voice when she finally managed to subdue her temper. "I don't even want to talk to you."

"That's too bad," Cole declared, his hand reaching out to block her from closing the door, "because I want to talk to you."

Brushing past her, he walked into the hall and went into her darkened parlor without hesitation.

In a surge of helpless rage, Elinor slammed the door shut and followed him.

She stood by the double glass doors, just inside the parlor, as he turned on several lamps. He paused, glancing around the room with its lace curtains and comfortable groupings of country antiques.

He turned to face her at last. "Who was the guy you were with tonight?"

"Brad?" she said, caught off guard by his question. What did Brad have to do with anything?

"Yeah, Brad," he responded ironically. "Who is he? Old boyfriend?"

"No, he's not an old boyfriend. Not that it's any business of yours."

Cole's jaw tightened. "I want to know what you were so upset about tonight. Have you been seeing this guy all along and you didn't want him to know about us?"

"There is no
us
!" Elinor burst out.

"No?" He moved toward her. "Maybe I should have stayed over last night. Then you wouldn't be so confused on the issue."

"I am not confused!" she yelled. "I am outraged!"

"Why?" asked Cole. "Because you nearly slept with someone your grandfather wouldn't shake hands with?"

"This has nothing to do with my grandfather or with Brad," Elinor stormed, adrenaline racing through her veins. "I'm furious because of the disgusting lengths you'll go to get what you want."

"What are you talking about?" he asked irritably.

"Is romancing women your favorite negotiating technique?" she spat out. "Do you get some kind of sick thrill from convincing us that we mean something to you?"

"Wait a minute," Cole said slowly. "You're accusing me of romancing you to get your vote on the plant?"

"Not just me," Elinor corrected with irony.

"Who else?" His eyes were narrowed in an analytic expression she'd come to recognize.

She laughed sarcastically, not answering him.

"Norell? You think I'm 'romancing' Norell Stephens," he said, his voice disbelieving. "The woman means nothing to me other than her connection to the mayor."

"That's exactly my point!" Elinor gasped, shocked that he'd admit it. How could she have been so stupid as to think someone like Cole could actually care about who he hurt?

"You think I've been chasing Norell to get her father's vote on the plant," Cole said with awful emphasis, his eyes going dark with emotion.

"I think it was fairly obvious what you were doing tonight," she returned stiffly.

"Tell me what you think is so obvious," he commanded in a soft purr. "Apparently, I'm dense."

"You just said Norell means nothing to you, and yet you take her dancing, holding her close, smiling down at her as if she were the only woman in the world." She stopped abruptly, afraid that the sob in her throat would escape and complete her embarrassment.

"Elinor," he said through his teeth. "I am not a gigolo or a two-bit con man. I do not have to 'hold women close' to make a business deal. We were just having a social evening."

"How do I know anything you say is true?" she demanded wrathfully, old fears taking over. "You could be pulling off a huge scam, and the simple citizens of Bayville wouldn't even see it. Quiet little towns get shafted by big business all the time. You're the local boy made good. Nobody's going to question you."

Cole took a step toward her, his face now dark with fury. "I'm not a con man and I don't need to sleep with women to do business. I don't need this plant badly enough to sell my body for it. As you so frequently point out, I'm filthy rich."

Though shaken by the intense look on his face, Elinor held her ground. He might look righteously indignant, but that didn't mean she was wrong. "Having money isn't any insurance against conscienceless behavior. Money breeds the need for more money. I've seen 'businessmen' trample people's lives. They care only about their own gain."

"Just because I came from the wrong side of the tracks doesn't mean I have the ethics of a sewer rat," Cole ground out, his hands clenched at his sides. "Prescotts don't have a monopoly on morals, you know."

"It doesn't have anything to do with where you came from," she denied shakily. "It has to do with what you'll do to get what you want. My family was destroyed by the pursuit of money."

Cole clenched his jaw and grappled with the emotions that raged through him. She was wrong about him, overall. But the knowledge of his own duplicity checked the anger roused in him by her accusations.

He had to think, had to calm himself down. If anything good was to come of this mess, he had to focus all his energies on listening to Elinor at this moment.

The stakes were too high to blow it. He was so disappointed in her for doubting him that he wanted to shake her. But he realized Elinor had become too important to him to ruin his chances by dumping his childhood insecurities on her. If he could figure out what was going on in her head, maybe he could get past her defenses.

Her accusations tonight made it perfectly clear that he hadn't made any headway in gaining her trust. He knew he wasn't the man she believed him to be. That didn't diminish his frustration with her, but it gave him enough pause to wonder why she was so threatened by him.

Cole drew in a calming breath and willed his pulse to steady itself. "What do you mean, your family was destroyed by the pursuit of money?"

Elinor brushed her palms nervously down the sides of her full skirt. "I don't think you really want to hear about the downfall of the Prescotts. You seem to think we're nothing but a bunch of snobs."

"Tell me about your family, Elinor." Shifting so that the lamplight fell on her face, he watched her. "Does it have anything to do with why your father left Oakleigh and never came back?"

She gave a short laugh. "For my father, money and Oakleigh meant the same thing. And he'd have sacrificed a kidney to get his hands on either one."

"Go on," he murmured so focused on her that he felt he could hear her heart beat.

"Look, Cole." She paced restlessly, stopping behind a chair, her hand resting on its back. "There's nothing really to tell. My father was a spoiled child of wealth who grew up and made a career out of alcoholism and chasing money."

"I never knew your father," he murmured, sensing the weight of all the things she hadn't said.

Elinor shrugged. "I loved my father, but he was an obsessed man. He wanted to be a success, to have money to burn. That was going to be his way of showing my grandfather how wrong he'd been."

"Daniel kicked your father out of Oakleigh?"

"Of course. My father said his father didn't want to share the money or the plantation," she said. "Who knows what really happened? But they never made it up. And neither of them ever gave any sign of wanting to."

"And you're convinced that I'm just like them," Cole finished for her. "Obsessed by money and success."

She shrugged again, a sad kind of defiance settling over her features. "You said yourself that anything can be achieved if you go about it the right way."

"And you think I meant that I'm willing to use any means to achieve what I'm after," he concluded.

Elinor didn't answer, her doubt and pain clear in her eloquent hazel eyes. Cole ached for her then. He wanted to sweep her up in his arms and promise her that he'd never let anyone hurt her again.

But this wasn't the moment. Her defenses were tightly guarded, walls in place. He was, without question, the enemy, and she resented his intrusion into her stronghold.

The situation called for strategy, and for this prize, he would use any means.

"Elinor," he said, as he turned toward the door, knowing it was time to abandon the battlefield. "You know me better than you realize."

She watched him go, a startled look on her face that was quickly banished.

Cole paused by the parlor doors. "By the way," he murmured. "Who's Brad?"

For a brief second, he saw a smile in her eyes, the laughing, teasing look that had first captivated him. It held a spark of connection, an answering spar to his challenge. And then she looked away.

"Goodnight," he said, not waiting for a verbal response. That brief shimmering response in her face was enough to give him heart for the battle.

Cole left her cottage, pulling the door shut tight behind himself as a myriad of thoughts churned in his brain. Reaching his car, he got in and started the engine on autopilot.

Their interchange had certainly shed light on a few things that had been puzzling him. But it didn't make the future any more certain.

Should he confess? Should he admit that he was the anonymous bidder for Oakleigh, admit to having lied to her by default? He didn't think so. Such a move would almost surely mean losing Oakleigh. He could imagine her taking great pleasure in refusing his offer in a fit of rage.

And honesty at this point would probably not earn him points with Elinor. It should, but it wouldn't. She'd feel betrayed all over again, only this time on a larger, more personal scale.