Reflections Page 6

  Lindsay knew the restaurant. She had been there once or twice before when a date had wanted to impress her. She knew that Seth Bannion wouldn’t feel the need to impress anyone. This was simply the sort of restaurant he could choose: quiet, elegant, with superior food and service.

  “My father brought me here once,” Lindsay remembered as she stepped from the car. “On my sixteenth birthday.” She waited for Seth to join her, then offered her hand. “I hadn’t been allowed to date until then, so he took me out on my birthday. He said he wanted to be my first date.” She smiled, warmed by the memory. “He was always doing things like that . . . small, incredible things.” Turning, she found Seth watching her. Moonlight showered over both of them. “I’m glad I came. I’m glad it was with you.”

  He gave her a curious look, then trailed a finger down her braid. “So am I.”

  Together they walked up the steps that led to the front door.

  Inside, Lindsay was attracted to the long, wide window that revealed an expanse of the Long Island Sound. Sitting in the warm, candlelit restaurant, she could all but hear the waves beat against the rocks below. She could almost feel the cold and the spray.

  “This is a wonderful place,” she enthused as they settled at their table. “So elegant, so subdued, yet open to all that power.” There was a smile on her lips as she turned back to Seth. “I like contrasts, don’t you?” The candlelight caught the dull gleam of silver at her ears. “How dull life would be if everything fit into a slot.”

  “I’ve been wondering,” Seth countered as his eyes flickered from the thick hoops to the delicate planes of her face, “exactly where you fit in.”

  After a quick shake of her head, Lindsay looked back out the window. “I often wonder that myself. You know yourself well, I think. It shows.”

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  Lindsay turned her head at Seth’s question and saw a waiter hovering at his elbow. “Yes.” She smiled at him before she gave her attention back to Seth. “Some white wine would be nice, I think. Something cold and dry.”

  His eyes remained on hers while he ordered. There’s something quietly tenacious in the way he looks at me, Lindsay decided, like a man who’s finished one page of a book and intends to go on reading until the end. When they were alone, the silence held. Something fluttered up her spine, and she drew in a long breath. It was time to establish priorities.

  “We need to talk about Ruth.”

  “Yes.”

  “Seth.” Nonplussed that his look didn’t waver, Lindsay added authority to her voice. “You have to stop looking at me that way.”

  “I don’t think so,” he disagreed mildly.

  Her brow arched at his reply, but a hint of amusement touched her mouth. “And I thought you were so scrupulously polite.”

  “I’m adaptable,” he told her. He was relaxed in his chair, one arm resting over the back as he studied her. “You’re beautiful. I enjoy looking at beauty.”

  “Thank you.” Lindsay decided she would grow used to his direct gaze before the evening was over. “Seth,” she leaned forward, pushed by her own thoughts, “this morning, when I watched Ruth, I knew she had talent. This afternoon in class I was even more impressed.”

  “It was very important to her to study with you.”

  “But it shouldn’t be.” Lindsay continued quickly as she again observed the slight narrowing of his eyes. “I’m not capable of giving her everything she needs. My school’s so limited in what it can offer, especially to a girl like Ruth. She should be in New York, in a school where her training could be more centered, more intense.”

  Seth waited while the waiter opened and poured their wine. He lifted his glass, studying the contents carefully before speaking. “Aren’t you capable of instructing Ruth?”

  Lindsay’s brows shot up at the tone of the question. When she answered, her voice was no longer warm. “I’m a capable instructor. Ruth simply needs discipline and advantages available elsewhere.”

  “You’re easily annoyed,” Seth commented, then sipped his wine.

  “Am I?” Lindsay sipped hers as well, trying to remain as pragmatic as he. “Perhaps I’m temperamental,” she offered and felt satisfied with the cool tone. “You’ve probably heard dancers are high-strung.”

  Seth shifted his shoulders. “Ruth plans to take more than fifteen hours of training a week with you. Isn’t that adequate?”

  “No.” Lindsay set down her glass and again leaned close. If he asked questions, she concluded, he couldn’t be totally unreasonable. “She should be taking classes every day, more specialized classes than I could possibly offer because I simply don’t have any other students with her abilities. Even if I could instruct her one on one, it wouldn’t be enough. She needs partnering classes. I have four male students, all of whom come in once a week to polish their football moves. They won’t even participate in the recitals.”

  A sound of frustration escaped. Her voice had become low and intense in her need to make him understand. “Cliffside isn’t the cultural center of the east coast. It’s a small Yankee town.” There was an inherent, unrehearsed beauty in the way her hands gestured to accent her words. Music was in the movement, silent and sweet. “People here are basic, they’re not dreamers. Dancing has no practical purpose. It can be a hobby, it can be an enjoyment, but here it isn’t thought of as a career. It’s not thought of as a life.”

  “Yet you grew up here,” Seth pointed out, then added more wine to the glasses. It shimmered gold in the candlelight. “You made it a career.”

  “That’s true.” Lindsay ran a fingertip around the rim of her glass. She hesitated, wanting to choose her words carefully. “My mother was a professional dancer, and she was very . . . strict about my training. I went to a school about seventy miles from here. We spent a great deal of time in the car coming and going.” Again she looked up at Seth, but the smile was beginning to play around her mouth. “My teacher was a marvel, a wonderful woman, half French, half Russian. She’s almost seventy now and not taking students or I’d plead with you to send Ruth to her.”

  Seth’s tone was as calm and undisturbed as it had been at the start of the conversation. “Ruth wants to study with you.”

  Lindsay wanted to scream with frustration. She took a sip of wine until the feeling passed. “I was seventeen, Ruth’s age, when I went to New York. And I’d already had eight years of intense study in a larger school. At eighteen I started with the company. The competition for a place is brutal, and training is . . .” Lindsay paused, then laughed and shook her head. “It’s indescribable. Ruth needs it, she deserves it. As soon as possible if she wants to be a serious dancer. Her talent demands it.”

  Seth took his time in answering. “Ruth is little more than a child who’s just been through a series of unhappy events.” He signaled the waiter for menus. “New York will still be there in three or four years.”

  “Three or four years!” Lindsay set the menu down without glancing at it. She stared at Seth, incredulous. “She’ll be twenty.”

  “An advanced age,” he returned dryly.

  “It is for a dancer,” Lindsay retorted. “It’s rare for one of us to dance much past thirty. Oh, the men steal a few extra years with character parts, or now and again there’s someone spectacular like Fonteyn. Those are the exceptions, not the rules.”

  “Is that why you don’t go back?” Lindsay’s thoughts stumbled to a halt at the question. “Do you feel your career is over at twenty-five?”

  She lifted her glass, then set it down again. “We’re discussing Ruth,” she reminded him, “not me.”

  “Mysteries are intriguing, Lindsay.” Seth picked up her hand, turning it over to study her palm before he brought his eyes back to hers. “And a beautiful woman with secrets is irresistible. Have you ever considered that some hands were made for kissing? This is one of them.” He took
her palm to his lips.

  Lindsay’s muscles seemed to go fluid at the contact. She studied him, frankly fascinated with the sensations. She wondered what it would feel like to have his lips pressed to hers, firmly, warmly. She liked the shape of his mouth and the slow, considering way it smiled. Abruptly, she brought herself out of the dream. Priorities, she remembered.

  “About Ruth,” she began. Though she tried to pull her hand away, Seth kept it in his.

  “Ruth’s parents were killed in a train accident barely six months ago. It was in Italy.” There was no increased pressure on her fingers, but his voice had tightened. His eyes had hardened. Lindsay was reminded of how he had looked when he had loomed over her in the rain. “Ruth was unusually close to them, perhaps because they traveled so much. It was difficult for her to form other attachments. You might be able to imagine what it was like for a sixteen-year-old girl to find herself suddenly orphaned in a foreign country, in a town they’d been in for only two weeks.”

  Lindsay’s eyes filled with painful sympathy, but he continued before she could speak. “She knew virtually no one, and as I was on a site in South Africa, it took days to contact me. She was on her own for nearly a week before I could get to her. My brother and his wife were already buried when I got there.”

  “Seth, I’m sorry. I’m so terribly sorry.” The need to comfort was instinctive. Lindsay’s fingers tightened on his as her other hand reached up to cover their joined ones. Something flickered in his eyes, but she was too overwhelmed to see it. “It must have been horrible for her, for you.”

  He didn’t speak for a moment, but his study of her face deepened. “Yes,” he said at length, “it was. I brought Ruth back to the States, but New York is very demanding, and she was very fragile.”

  “So you found the Cliff House,” Lindsay murmured.

  Seth lifted a brow at the title but didn’t comment. “I wanted to give her something stable for a while, though I know she’s not thrilled with the notion of settling into a house in a small town. She’s too much like her father. But for now, I feel it’s what she needs.”

  “I think I can understand what you’re trying to do,” Lindsay said slowly. “And I respect it, but Ruth has other needs as well.”

  “We’ll talk about them in six months.”

  The tone was so final and quietly authoritative that Lindsay had closed her mouth before she realized it. Annoyance flitted over her face. “You’re very dictatorial, aren’t you?”

  “So I’ve been told.” His mood seemed to switch as she looked on. “Hungry?” he asked and smiled with slow deliberation.

  “A bit,” she admitted, but she frowned as she opened the menu. “The stuffed lobster is especially good here.”

  As Seth ordered, Lindsay let her eyes drift back out to the Sound. Clearly, she could see Ruth alone, frightened, stunned with grief, having to deal with the loss of her parents and the dreadful details that must have followed. Too well could she recall the panic she had felt upon being notified of her own parents’ accident. There was no forgetting the horror of the trip from New York back to Connecticut to find her father dead and her mother in a coma.

  And I was an adult, she reminded herself, already having been on my own for over three years. I was in my hometown, surrounded by friends. More than ever, she felt the need to help Ruth.

  Six months, she mused. If I can work with her individually, the time wouldn’t be completely wasted. And maybe, just maybe, I can convince Seth sooner. He’s got to understand how important this is for her. Losing my temper isn’t going to get me anywhere with a man like this, she acknowledged, so I’ll have to find some other way.

  On a site in South Africa, Lindsay reflected, going back over their conversation. Now what would he have been doing in South Africa? Even before she could mull over the possibilities, a jingle of memory sounded in her brain.

  “Bannion,” she said aloud and sent his eyebrow up in question. “S. N. Bannion, the architect. It just came to me.”

  “Did it?” He seemed mildly surprised, then broke a breadstick in half. He offered her a share. “I’m surprised you’ve had time to delve into architecture.”

  “I’d have to have been living in a cave for the past ten years not to know the name. What was it in . . . Newsview? Yes, Newsview, about a year ago. There was a profile of you with pictures of some of your more prestigious buildings. The Trade Center in Zurich, the MacAfee Building in San Diego.”

  “Your memory’s excellent,” Seth commented. The candlelight marbled over her skin. She looked as fragile as porcelain with eyes dark and vivid. They seemed to smile at him.

  “Flawless,” Lindsay agreed. “I also recall reading several tidbits about you and a large portion of the female population. I distinctly remember a department store heiress, an Australian tennis pro and a Spanish opera star. Weren’t you engaged to Billie Marshall, the newscaster, a few months ago?”

  Seth twirled the stem of his glass between his fingers. “I’ve never been engaged,” he answered simply. “It tends to lead to marriage.”

  “I see.” Absently, she chewed on the breadstick. “And that isn’t one of your goals?”

  “Is it one of yours?” he countered.

  Lindsay paused, frowning. She took his parry quite seriously. “I don’t know,” she murmured. “I suppose I’ve never thought of it in precisely that way. Actually, I haven’t had a great deal of time to think of it at all. Should it be a goal?” she thought aloud. “Or more of a surprise, an adventure?”

  “So speaks the romantic,” Seth observed.

  “Yes, I am,” Lindsay agreed without embarrassment. “But then, so are you or you’d never have bought the Cliff House.”

  “My choice of real estate makes me a romantic?”

  Lindsay leaned back, still nibbling on the breadstick. “It’s much more than a piece of real estate, and I’ve no doubt you felt that, too. You could have bought a dozen houses, all more conveniently located and in less need of repair.”

  “Why didn’t I?” Seth asked, intrigued with her theory.

  Lindsay allowed him to top off her glass again but left it untouched. The effect of the wine was already swirling pleasantly in her head. “Because you recognized the charm, the uniqueness. If you were a cynic, you’d have bought one of the condos twenty miles further up the coast which claim to put you in touch with genuine New England scenery while being fifteen convenient minutes from the Yankee Trader Mall.”

  Seth laughed, keeping his eyes on her while their meal was served. “I take it you don’t care for condos.”

  “I detest them,” Lindsay agreed immediately. “Arbitrarily, I’m afraid, but that’s strictly personal. They’re perfect for a great number of people. I don’t like . . .” She trailed off, hands gesturing as if to pluck the word from the air. “Uniformity,” she decided. “That’s strange, I suppose, because there’s so much regimentation in my career. I see that differently. Individual expression is so vital. I’d so much rather someone say I was different than I was beautiful.” She glanced down at the enormous serving of lobster. “Innovative is such a marvelous word,” she stated. “I’ve heard it applied to you.”

  “Is that why you became a dancer?” Seth speared a delicate morsel of lobster into melted butter. “To express yourself?”

  “I think it might be that because I was a dancer, I craved self-expression.” Lindsay chose lemon over butter. “Actually, I don’t analyze myself often, just other people. Did you know the house was haunted?”

  “No.” He grinned. “That wasn’t brought up during settlement.”

  “That’s because they were afraid you’d back out.” Lindsay speared a piece of lobster. “It’s too late now, and in any case, I think you’d enjoy having a ghost.”

  “Would you?”

  “Oh, yes, I would. Tremendously.” She popped the lobster into her mouth, leaning for
ward. “It’s a romantic, forlorn creature who was done in by a narrow-minded husband about a century ago. She was sneaking off to see her lover and was careless, I suppose. In any case, he dropped her from the second-floor balcony onto the rocks.”

  “That should have discouraged her adulterous tendencies,” Seth commented.

  “Mmm,” she agreed with a nod, hampered by a full mouth. “But she comes back now and again to walk in the garden. That’s where her lover was waiting.”

  “You seem rather pleased about the murder and deceit.”

  “A hundred years can make almost anything romantic. Do you realize how many of the great ballets deal with death yet remain romantic? Giselle and Romeo and Juliet are only two.”

  “And you’ve played both leads,” Seth said. “Perhaps that’s why you empathize with a star-crossed ghost.”

  “Oh, I was involved with your ghost before I danced either Giselle or Juliet,” Lindsay sighed, watching the stars glitter over the water’s surface. “That house has fascinated me for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, I swore I’d live there one day. I’d have the gardens replanted, and all the windows would glisten in the sun.” She turned back to Seth. “That’s why I’m glad you bought it.”

  “Are you?” His eyes ran the length of her slender throat to the collar of her dress. “Why?”

  “Because you’ll appreciate it. You’ll know what to do to make it live again.” His gaze paused briefly on her mouth before returning to her eyes. Lindsay felt a tingle along her skin. She straightened in her chair. “I know you’ve done some work already,” she continued, feeling the Cliff House was a safe dinner topic. “You must have specific plans for changes.”

  “Would you like to see what’s been done?”

  “Yes,” she answered immediately, unable to pretend otherwise.

  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow afternoon.” He looked at her curiously. “Did you know you’ve an outrageous appetite for someone so small?”