Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [11]
“I guess a purple door is really asking for trouble, then.”
“I had a hell of a time convincing the painters that I wasn’t kidding. Now, back in Princeton, where we used to live, it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.” She opened the refrigerator and reached for the container of soup that her neighbor, Selena Brennan, had dropped off earlier in the day. “Down here, everything is grist for the local mill.”
Lightning exploded outside and the thunder rattled the rafters of the old house.
“I think we might want to get this soup heated up just in case we lose power,” she noted.
“Can I help with anything?”
“You can get two bowls and small plates out of the cupboard behind you”—she reached up to take a small pan from a rack on the wall behind the stove—“and maybe you could put some sandwiches together. I think there’s some roast beef and some Swiss cheese in the fridge, rolls in the bread box there. And I’m sure there’s some hot dogs, if you’d rather.”
A look of something bordering on horror crossed Adam’s face, much as she’d anticipated, and Kendra smiled to herself. He mumbled something about nitrates and searched for the roast beef.
The lights flickered several times while Kendra prepared soup and Adam made sandwiches. She replenished their glasses with fresh scoops of ice, some tea, a sprig of mint, and a thin slice of lemon before sitting down and, ignoring the torrent that slashed against the window behind her, asked, “Okay, where were we?”
Adam lay on the old leather sofa in the study that Jeff Smith had built for himself almost twenty-five years earlier. The room was large and square, with a ceiling higher than that found in any other room in the house, floor-to-ceiling library shelves on one long wall, rough-hewn rafters, and a bay window with a seat piled high with cushions. Adam plumped the pillow under his head and listened to the echo of Kendra’s footfalls on the floorboards overhead and reminded himself that he and Kendra had, would probably always have, a strictly professional relationship.
Right.
At midnight the storm had still been shaking the trees that stood like sentinels around the old house, and Kendra had announced matter-of-factly that Adam would have to spend the night.
“My dad designed this addition himself,” she’d told him as she led him into the darkly paneled room. “The sofa’s extra long because he was, and he liked a sofa he could stretch out on without twisting up his legs. This was his favorite place in the house. I spend a lot of time here.”
“It’s a great room,” Adam said, nodding his approval as if it had been expected. “Do you ever use the fireplace?”
“I’ve used it a lot since I’ve come back. It makes a cozy place to sit and read, or work.”
Kendra opened a door to the right and said, “There’s a full bath here, in case you want a shower. There are towels stacked on the shelves. Extra blankets are inside that chest next to the sofa in case it gets cool.”
“Thanks. I’ll be fine.”
They stood awkwardly for the briefest of minutes, as if both of them had a sudden recollection of the last time they’d been in a cozy room together. Then, to banish the memory and avoid the moment, Adam lifted a photograph from one of the bookshelves. A tall, dark-haired man stood with his arm around a slender young woman with a mass of curly blond hair.
“Is this your father?”
“Yes,” she smiled. “That was taken the summer he graduated from college.”
“And the woman in the picture, is she your mother?”
“No, no. That’s my aunt. My dad’s sister, when she was still Lorraine.”
“Who is she now?”
“Sierra.” The sarcasm was unmistakable. “She took up with a somewhat wild crowd in college. Dropped out in the middle of her junior year, changed her name and bought herself a ranch in Arizona.”
“How could she afford to do that?”
“She and my dad had trust funds that had been set up by their grandparents.” She added dryly, “It was more than enough to pay for her ranch and to support the ‘friends’ who came and went over the years. And still do, no doubt.”
“Sounds as if you disapprove