Stranger in the Moonlight Read online

  “I’ve only known him for six months,” Kim had said, frowning. “He asked to go with me because he wants some time off from his catering business.”

  “Uh-huh,” Carla said. “You’re forgetting that I know his last girlfriend. He never took off a weekend for her, and they were together for over two years.”

  Kim had said she needed to . . . She couldn’t think of an excuse, but had just left the room.

  “Kim?” Dave asked. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes. It’s just that a childhood friend of mine has shown up and is staying in my pool house.”

  “That must be nice for you,” Dave said, “but, Kim, no playdates this weekend. I want you all to myself. For our own playdate.”

  “Okay,” she said, and after a few more murmurings, Dave said he had to go, as thirty pounds of shrimp had just been delivered.

  She’d put her phone in her pocket and set about cleaning the kitchen—and looking at the clock. It didn’t make any sense that she’d be nervous about how long Travis was spending with his mother, but she was.

  An hour went by, then two. At the start of the third hour she was sure she’d never see him again. When he tapped on the back glass door, she jumped, then gave him her best smile.

  He didn’t look to be in the best mood, which was confirmed when he sat down on a stool by the bar and said, “You have any whiskey?”

  She poured him a shot of McTarvit single malt, a drink she kept on hand for her male cousins.

  He downed it in one gulp.

  “You want to talk about it?” she asked gently. When he looked at her, she saw pain in his eyes.

  “You ever have a feeling that the thing you dread most in life is coming true?”

  She wanted to say that she feared being a fifty-year-old businesswoman with no private life, and so far, that’s where she was heading. “Yes,” she said. “Is that what you think is happening to you?”

  “My mother seems to think so.”

  She waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t say any more. When they were kids he’d always said as little as possible, and it had been her job to pull him out of himself. “So what are you planning to do tomorrow?”

  He looked at her for a moment and smiled. “Not what I’d like to do, but I’m open to alternate suggestions.”

  “What does that mean? That you can’t do what you want to?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “What are you going to do tomorrow?”

  Kim felt the tension in her chest release. She’d been afraid that now that he’d seen his mother he’d say he was leaving. “Work,” she said. “What I do every day. You’re the one with open plans. Did your mother tell you to leave town?”

  “Actually, just the opposite. Is there anything to eat? I burned off a little energy after the mom-talk.”

  Kim had been so concerned that he was going to leave that she hadn’t noticed that his shirt was torn and dirty, and there was a leaf in his hair. Just like when we were kids, she thought. “What in the world did you do?” she asked as she opened the fridge.

  “A little climbing. That’s a nice cliff you have at Stirling Point.”

  “How’d you get so dirty going up that trail?”

  “Didn’t use the trail,” he said as he went to the cabinet and withdrew a couple of plates.

  She halted with a bowl in her hands. “But that’s a sheer face.”

  Travis gave a half shrug.

  Kim didn’t smile. “You had no ropes, and you were alone. That was dangerous. Don’t do it again,” she said sternly.

  “For fear of dismemberment?” he said, and something about the word made him grimace. He put potato salad on the plates. “So what did you do while I was out?”

  “Tried to form wax into moonlight.”

  He looked at her in curiosity. “What does that mean?”

  “Last night at the wedding I thought the moonlight was so beautiful I wondered if I could translate it into jewelry.”

  “What does that have to do with wax?” he asked as he began eating.

  Kim sat down next to him and took the plate he’d filled for her. It ran through her mind that the food had been cooked by Dave and she really ought to tell Travis about him, but she didn’t.

  “I make jewelry by construction, welding on a small scale, or the lost wax process.”

  “Lost wax? Didn’t I see that on TV? Some mysterious method that had disappeared over the centuries.”

  Kim gave a derogatory snort. “Those idiots! It’s called ‘lost wax’ not because the process was lost but because the wax melts and it flows out. The wax is lost in the making.”

  “You’ll have to show me. Maybe you could—”

  “Travis!” Kim said, “I want to know what’s going on. You said you needed my help and I’m sure it’s not to give you a course in jewelry making.”

  He hesitated. “I have three weeks,” he said.

  “Three weeks until what?”

  “Until I have to face my father with the news that his wife wants a divorce.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “Legal battles,” he said. “Dad will fight and I’ll fight him. It will be a war.”

  “But once it’s done, will you be free?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll be free to do, but I will no longer have an obligation to either of my parents. Except morally and ethically, and through affection, and . . .”

  “But what are your plans for now? For these three weeks?” Kim asked.

  “Maybe I’ll harness some moonlight so you can put it in wax and lose it.”

  Kim smiled. “That would be nice. I need some new ideas. I’ve always been inspired by organic forms and I’ve pretty much run through the ones I know.”

  “What about those flowers you used to tie together?”

  “They grow from clover, and they’re considered weeds.”

  “I liked them,” he said softly and for a moment their eyes locked. But then Travis turned away and picked up the empty plates and put them in the dishwasher.

  “If you’re going to be here for three weeks we need to tell people who you are.”

  “People?” he asked. “Who would that be?”

  “Travis, this is a small town. I’m sure they are all talking about how I picked up some dark stranger and took him home with me.”

  “Has your mom called you yet?” he asked, smiling.

  “Last I heard she was in New Zealand so the news will take—I hope—another twenty-four hours to reach her. But my brother is here. And so is my cousin Colin.”

  “The town doctor and the sheriff. You are a well-connected young woman.”

  “What’s our story going to be? Will you tell people Lucy Cooper is your mother?”

  “She asked for a week to break the news to Layton that she’s married and has a kid.”

  “If she says it like that he’ll be expecting a nine-year-old.”

  “How old does your mother think you are?” Travis asked.

  “Five,” Kim answered, and they laughed. “What if we tell the truth but leave out that the lady who sews, Lucy Cooper, is the same as Mrs. Merritt? You visited as a child, we met, you grew up, and have now returned to Edilean for a three-week holiday.”

  Travis’s eyes lit up. “If I can get Mom to postpone telling Layton, I could get to know him before she tells who I am.”

  “I think we have a plan,” Kim said and they exchanged smiles.

  Four

  Joe Layton unlocked his office and grimaced at the sight of the papers on his desk. Yet again he wondered what the hell he was doing starting over at his age. The old feeling of resentment welled up in him. He’d thought he was going to spend his life in New Jersey running the hardware store his grandfather had started. He’d never thought of it as wildly ambitious or something that anyone would covet. But then his son, Joey, got married, had kids, and his wife had seen Layton Hardware as a gold mine, something that she’d kill to have.

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