A Will And A Way Page 8

  Just how was he going to handle this unwanted and unexpected attraction to a woman who’d rather put on the gloves and go a few rounds than walk in the moonlight?

  Romantic women had always appealed to him because he was, unashamedly, a romantic himself. He enjoyed candlelight, quiet music, long, lonely walks. Michael courted women in old-fashioned ways because he felt comfortable with old-fashioned ways. It didn’t interfere with the fact that he was, and had been since college, a staunch feminist. Romance and sociopolitical views were worlds apart. He had no trouble balancing equal pay for equal work against offering a woman a carriage ride through the park.

  And he knew if he sent Pandora a dozen white roses, she’d complain about the thorns.

  He wanted her. Michael was too much a creature of the senses to pretend otherwise. When he wanted something, he worked toward it in one of two ways. First, he planned out the best approach, then took the steps one at a time, maneuvering subtly. If that didn’t work, he tossed out subtlety and went after it with both hands. He’d had just as much success the first way as the second.

  As he saw it, Pandora wouldn’t respond to patience and posies. She wouldn’t go for being swept off her feet, either. With Pandora, he might just have to toss his two usual approaches and come up with a whole new third.

  An interesting challenge, Michael decided with a slow smile. He liked nothing better than arranging and rearranging plot lines and shifting angles. And hadn’t he always thought Pandora would make a fascinating character? So, he’d work it like a screenplay.

  Hero and heroine living as housemates, he began. Attracted to each other but reluctant. Hero is intelligent, charming. Has tremendous willpower. Hadn’t he given up smoking—five weeks, three days and fourteen hours ago? Heroine is stubborn and opinionated, often mistakes arrogance for independence. Hero gradually cracks through her brittle shield to their mutual satisfaction.

  Michael leaned back in his chair and grinned. He might just make it a play. A great deal of the action would be ad-lib, of course, but he had the general theme. Satisfied, and looking forward to the opening scene, Michael went back to work with a vengeance.

  Two hours breezed by with Michael working steadily. He answered the knock at his door with a grunt.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Donahue.” Charles, slightly out of breath from the climb up the stairs, stood in the doorway.

  Michael gave another grunt and finished typing the paragraph. “Yes, Charles?”

  “Telegram for you, sir.”

  “Telegram?” Scowling, he swiveled around in the chair. If there was a problem in New York—as there was at least once a week—the phone was the quickest way to solve it. “Thanks.” He took the telegram, but only flapped it against his palm. “Pandora still out in her shop?”

  “Yes, sir.” Grateful for the chance to rest, Charles expanded a bit. “Sweeney is a bit upset that Miss McVie missed lunch. She intends to serve dinner in an hour. I hope that suits your schedule.”

  Michael knew better than to make waves where Sweeney was concerned. “I’ll be down.”

  “Thank you, sir, and if I may say, I enjoy your television show tremendously. This week’s episode was particularly exciting.”

  “I appreciate that, Charles.”

  “It was Mr. McVie’s habit to watch it every week in my company. He never missed an episode.”

  “There probably wouldn’t have been a Logan’s Run without Jolley,” Michael mused. “I miss him.”

  “We all do. The house seems so quiet. But I—” Charles reddened a bit at the thought of overstepping his bounds.

  “Go ahead, Charles.”

  “I’d like you to know that both Sweeney and I are pleased to remain in your service, yours and Miss McVie’s. We were glad when Mr. McVie left you the house. The others…” He straightened his back and plunged on. “They wouldn’t have been suitable, sir. Sweeney and I had both discussed resigning if Mr. McVie had chosen to leave the Folley to one of his other heirs.” Charles folded his bony hands. “Will there be anything else before dinner, sir?”

  “No, Charles. Thank you.”

  Telegram in hand, Michael leaned back as Charles went out. The old butler had known him since childhood. Michael could remember distinctly when Charles had stopped calling him Master Donahue. He’d been sixteen and visiting the Folley during the summer months. Charles had called him Mr. Donahue and Michael had felt as though he’d just stepped from childhood, over adolescence and into adulthood.

  Strange how much of his life had been involved with the Folley and the people who were a part of it. Charles had served him his first whisky—with dignity if not approval on his eighteenth birthday. Years before that, Sweeney had given him his first ear boxing. His parents had never bothered to swat him and his tutors wouldn’t have dared. Michael still remembered that after the sting had eased, he’d felt like part of a family.

  Pandora had been both bane and fantasy during his adolescence. Apparently that hadn’t changed as much as Michael had thought. And Jolley. Jolley had been father, grandfather, friend, son and brother.

  Jolley had been Jolley, and Michael had spoken no less than the truth when he’d told Charles he missed the old man. In some part of himself, he always would. Thinking of other things, Michael tore open the telegram.

  Your mother gravely ill. Doctors not hopeful. Make arrangements to fly to Palm Springs immediately. L. J. KEYSER.

  Michael stared at the telegram for nearly a minute. It wasn’t possible; his mother was never ill. She considered it something of a social flaw. He felt a moment’s disbelief, a moment’s shock. He was reaching for the phone before either had worn off.

  When Pandora walked by his room fifteen minutes later, she saw him tossing clothes into a bag. She lifted a brow, leaned against the jamb and cleared her throat. “Going somewhere?”

  “Palm Springs.” He tossed in his shaving kit.

  “Really?” Now she folded her arms. “Looking for a sunnier climate?”

  “It’s my mother. Her husband sent me a telegram.”

  Instantly she dropped her cool, sarcastic pose and came into the room. “Is she ill?”

  “The telegram didn’t say much, but it doesn’t sound good.”

  “Oh, Michael, I’m sorry. Can I do anything? Call the airport?”

  “I’ve already done it. I’ve got a flight in a couple of hours. They’re routing me through half a dozen cities, but it was the best I could do.”

  Feeling helpless, she watched him zip up his bag. “I’ll drive you to the airport if you like.”

  “No, thanks anyway.” He dragged a hand through his hair as he turned to face her. The concern was there, though he realized she’d only met his mother once, ten, perhaps fifteen years before. The concern was for him and unexpectedly solid. “Pandora, it’s going to take me half the night to get to the coast. And then I don’t know—” He broke off, not able to imagine his mother seriously ill. “I might not be able to make it back in time—not in forty-eight hours.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want you to think about it. I’ll call Fitzhugh and explain. Maybe he’ll be able to do something. After all, it’s an emergency. If he can’t, he can’t.”

  He was taking a step that could pull millions of dollars out from under her. Millions of dollars and the home she loved. Torn, Michael went to her and rested his hands on her shoulders. She was so slender. He’d forgotten just how fragile a strong woman could be. “I’m sorry, Pandora. If there was any other way…”

  “Michael, I told you I didn’t want the money. I meant it.”

  He studied her a moment. Yes, the strength was there, the stubbornness and the basic goodness he often overlooked. “I believe you did,” he murmured.

  “As for the rest, well, we’ll see. Now go ahead before you miss your plane.” She waited until he’d grabbed his bag then walked with him to the hall. “Call me if you get the chance and let me know how your mother is.”

  He nodded, started for t
he stairs, then stopped. Setting his bag down, he came back and pulled her against him. The kiss was hard and long, with hints of a fire barely banked. He drew her away just as abruptly. “See you.”

  “Yeah.” Pandora swallowed. “See you.”

  She stood where she was until she heard the front door slam.

  She had a long time to think about the kiss, through a solitary dinner, during the hours when she tried to read by the cheery fire in the parlor. It seemed to Pandora that there’d been more passion concentrated in that brief contact than she’d experienced in any of her carefully structured relationships. Was it because she’d always been able to restrict passion to her temper, or her work?

  It might have been because she’d been sympathetic, and Michael had been distraught. Emotions had a way of feeding emotions. But for the second time she found herself alone in the house, and to her astonishment, lonely. It was foolish because the fire was bright, the book entertaining and the brandy she sipped warming.

  But lonely she was. After little more than a month, she’d come to depend on Michael’s company. Even to look forward to it, as strange as that may have been. She liked sitting across from him at meals, arguing with him. She especially liked watching the way he fought, exploding when she poked pins in his work. Perverse? she wondered with a sigh. Perhaps she was, but life was so boring without a bit of friction. No one seemed to provide it more satisfactorily than Michael Donahue.

  She wondered when she’d see him again. And she wondered if now they’d have to forgo spending the winter together. If the terms of the will were broken, there would be no reason for them to stay on together. In fact, they’d have no right to stay at the Folley at all. They’d both go back to New York where, due to separate life-styles, they never saw one another. Not until now, when it was a possibility, did Pandora fully realize how much she didn’t want it to happen.

  She didn’t want to lose the Folley. There were so many memories, so many important ones. Wouldn’t they begin to fade if she couldn’t walk into a room and bring them back? She didn’t want to lose Michael. His companionship, she amended quickly. It was more satisfying than she’d imagined to have someone near who could meet you head to head. If she lost that daily challenge, life would be terribly flat. Since it was Michael who was adding that certain spark to the days, it was only natural to want him around. Wasn’t it?

  With a sigh, Pandora shut the book and decided an early night would be more productive than idle speculation. Just as she reached over to shut out the lamp, it went out on its own. She was left with the glow of the fire.

  Odd, she thought and reached for the switch. After turning it back and forth, she rose, blaming a defective bulb. But when she walked into the hall she found it in darkness. The light she’d left burning was out, along with the one always left on at the top of the stairs. Again Pandora reached for a switch and again she found it useless.

  Power failure, she decided but found herself hesitating in the dark. There was no storm. Electricity at the Folley went out regularly during snow and thunderstorms, but the back-up generator took over with in minutes. Pandor awaited, but the house remained dark. It occurred to her ass he stood there hoping for the best, that she’d never really considered how dark dark could be. She was already making her way back into the parlor for a candle when the rest occurred to her. The house was heated with electricity, as well. If she didn’t see about the power soon, the house was going to be very cold as well as very dark before too long. With two people in their seventies in the house, she couldn’t let it go.

  Annoyed, she found three candles in a silver holder and lit them. It wasn’t any use disturbing Charles’s sleep and dragging him down to the basement. It was probably only a faulty fuse or two. Holding the candles ahead of her, Pandora wound her way through the curving halls to the cellar door.

  She wasn’t bothered about going down into the cellar in the dark. So she told herself as she stood with her hand on the knob. It was, after all, just another room. And one, if memory served, which was full of the remains of several of Uncle Jolley’s rejected hobbies. The fuse box was down there. She’d seen it when she’d helped her uncle cart down several boxes of photographic equipment after he’d decided to give up the idea of becoming a portrait photographer. She’d go down, check for faulty fuses and replace them. After the lights and heat were taken care of, she’d have a hot bath and go to bed.

  But she drew in a deep breath before she opened the door.

  The stairs creaked. It was to be expected. And they were steep and narrow as stairs were in any self-respecting cellar. The light from her candles set the shadows dancing over the crates and boxes her uncle had stored there. She’d have to see if she could talk Michael into helping her sort through them. On some bright afternoon. She was humming nervously to herself before she reached the bottom stair.

  Pandora held the candles high and scanned the floor as far as the light circled. She knew mice had an affection for dark, dank cellars and she had no affection for them. When nothing rushed across the floor, she skirted around two six-foot crates and headed for the fuse box. There was the motorized exercise bike that Uncle Jolley had decided took the fun out of staying fit. There was a floor-to-ceiling shelf of old bottles. He’d once been fascinated by a ten-dollar bottle cutter. And there, she saw with a sigh of relief, was the fuse box. Setting the candles on a stack of boxes, she opened the big metal door and stared inside. There wasn’t a single fuse in place.

  “What the hell’s this?” she muttered. Then as she shifted to look closer, her foot sent something rattling over the concrete floor. Jolting, she stifled a scream and the urge to run. Holding her breath, she waited in the silence. When she thought she could manage it, she picked up the candles again and crouched. Scattered at her feet were a dozen fuses. She picked one up and let it lay in her palm. The cellar might have its quota of mice, but they weren’t handy enough to empty a fuse box.

  She felt a little shudder, which she ignored as she began to gather up the fuses. Tricks, she told herself. Just silly tricks. Annoying, but not as destructive as the one played in her workshop. It wasn’t even a very clever trick, she decided, as it was as simple to put fuses back as it had been to take them out.

  Working quickly, and trying not to look over her shoulder, Pandora put the fuses back in place. Whoever had managed to get into the basement and play games had wasted her time, nothing more.

  Finished, she went over to the stairs, and though she hated herself, ran up them. But her sigh of relief was premature. The door she’d carefully left open was closed tightly. For a few moments she simply refused to believe it. She twisted the knob, pushed, shoved and twisted again. Then she forgot everything but the fear of being closed in a dark place. Pandora beat on the door, shouted, pleaded, then collapsed half sobbing on the top step. No one would hear her. Charles and Sweeney were on the other side of the house.

  For five minutes she gave in to fear and self-pity. She was alone, all alone, locked in a dark cellar where no one would hear her until morning. It was already cold and getting colder. By morning…her candles would go out by then, and she’d have no light at all. That was the worst, the very worst, to have no light.

  Light, she thought, and called herself an idiot as she wiped away tears. Hadn’t she just fixed the lights? Scrambling up, Pandora hit the switch at the top of the stairs. Nothing happened. Holding back a scream, she held the candles up. The socket over the stairs was empty.

  So, they’d thought to take out the bulbs. It had been a clever trick after all. She swallowed fresh panic and tried to think. They wanted her to be incoherent, and she refused to give them the satisfaction. When she found out which one of her loving family was playing nasty games…

  That was for later, Pandora told herself. Now she was going to find a way out. She was shivering, but she told herself it was anger. There were times it paid to lie to yourself. Holding the candles aloft, she forced herself to go down the steps again when cowering at the t
op seemed so much easier.

  The cellar was twice the size of her apartment in New York, open and barnlike without any of the ornate decorating Uncle Jolley had been prone to. It was just dark and slightly damp with concrete floors and stone walls that echoed. She wouldn’t think about spiders or things that scurried into corners right now. Slowly, trying to keep calm, she searched for an exit.

  There were no doors, but then she was standing several feet underground. Like a tomb. That particular thought didn’t soothe her nerves so she concentrated on other things. She’d only been down in the cellar a handful of times and hadn’t given a great deal of thought to the setup. Now she had to think about it—and pretend her palms weren’t clammy.

  She eased by a pile of boxes as high as her shoulders, then let out a scream when she ran into a maze of cobwebs. More disgusted than frightened, she brushed and dragged at them. It didn’t sit well with her to make a fool out of herself, even if no one was around to see it. Someone was going to pay, she told herself as she fought her way clear.

  Then she saw the window, four feet above her head and tiny. Though it was hardly the size of a transom, Pandora nearly collapsed in relief. After setting the candles on a shelf, she began dragging boxes over. Her muscles strained and her back protested, but she hauled and stacked against the wall. The first splinter had her swearing. After the third, she stopped counting. Out of breath, streaming with sweat, she leaned against her makeshift ladder. Now all she had to do was climb it. With the candles in one hand, she used the other to haul herself up. The light shivered and swayed. The boxes groaned and teetered a bit. The thought passed through her mind that if she fell, she could lie there on the frigid concrete with broken bones until morning. She pulled herself high and refused to think at all.

  When she reached the window, she found the little latch rusted and stubborn. Swearing, praying, she balanced the candles on the box under her and used both hands. She felt the latch give, then stick again. If she’d only thought to find a tool before she’d climbed up. She considered climbing back down and finding one, then made the mistake of looking behind her. The stack of boxes looked even more rickety from up there.