Tempest in Eden

She tapped on the bathroom door. The typing ceased abruptly. "Yes, Shay?"

"I'm all done now. The bathroom's yours if you need it."

"Thanks," was all he said, though it was a long time before she heard the typewriter again.

She knew her scheme had failed when he came down to dinner. John and Celia had returned in plenty of time to rest and clean up before the evening meal. As promised, John cooked succulent steaks and baked potatoes on an outdoor charcoal grill. Shay and Celia prepared a huge tossed green salad and all the trimmings.

Shay was ladling sour cream from the carton into a serving dish when Ian pushed through the swinging door smelling of soap and his distinctive cologne. "I'm starving. When's dinner?" The jauntiness of his walk and the carefree lilt in his voice worried her. He shouldn't be feeling nearly so cocky.

Celia laughed charmingly at him. "Just like your father. He's outside cooking the steaks. He said to join him when you came down. There's a beer for you in the refrigerator."

"Thank you."

As he crouched down in front of the refrigerator, Shay looked down at him over a bare shoulder. Her sundress had a straight bodice with nothing but strings crisscrossing at intervals for the back. The skirt was soft and full and fell to the middle of her calf. The ties of thonged sandals were wrapped around her ankles. The ethnic print of her dress accented the honeyed tone of her skin, made the blond streaks in her hair more prominent, and with the darker eye makeup she had applied, enhanced her exotic features.

"All finished with your studying?" she inquired in a sultry voice.

When his blue eyes lifted to hers, she immediately saw the mockery in them. With his powerful thighs he raised himself to his full height. She had to tilt her chin up awkwardly to look him full in the face. And what she saw she didn't like one bit. He was all but laughing at her!

"The panties you washed out weren't quite dry by the time I needed the shower, so I hung them on the back of a chair in your room. Hope you don't mind."

Then he strolled out the back door, letting the screen slam shut behind him. The crash punctuated his statement like a vaudevillian drumbeat.

"Panties?" Celia asked in a high voice. "Did he say—"

"Yes, panties, panties," Shay all but shouted at her mother. She turned back to her job, her whole body quaking with fury.

She was the victim of Ian's derision during the entire meal. He never said anything aloud, but his taunting glances told her he had caught on to her machinations, that he saw right through her designs, and that rather than thinking she was a seductress, he thought she was a highly amusing idiot.

She hardly touched the food on her plate, though she did full justice to the bottle of burgundy that John had opened t

o accompany their steaks. By the time she stood up to help her mother clear the dining-room table, her head was buzzing pleasantly. When they emerged from the cleaned kitchen, John and Ian were engrossed in a chess game. Celia settled down to watch a romantic movie on TV. Shay stewed.

Bored, she wandered listlessly from room to room. Spotting her tennis racket propped against the banister, she decided to take it back to her car. The cool evening air should help her muzzy head.

She planned to leave this bad experience behind her early in the morning, even before Ian if possible, and return home. She would pack what she could tonight. Almost from the moment of her arrival she'd been made a fool of, and she couldn't wait to get back to her own world, where a few people even respected her opinion, thought she was pretty, and laughed with her instead of at her.

The car trunk lid popped up, and she was in the process of tossing the racket inside when she spotted her portfolio. She took it everywhere with her, like an appendage of her body. Inside the large, square leather folder was a history of her career as a nude model. She used the pictures of paintings, sculptures, and copies of photographs for reference when she interviewed with an artist for a job.

Now, almost crowing with glee, she hauled the heavy folder out of the trunk. Tucking the portfolio under her arm, she returned to the house.

She was alarmed to find her mother sobbing uncontrollably in John's arms. She dropped the portfolio onto the entry table. "Mom, what is it?"

"The movie," John said. Shay slumped with relief. "It ended sadly," he explained. "Come on, sweetheart, let's go upstairs." He kissed Celia on the temple and hugged her close as he negotiated the stairs for both of them. All the way to the top, he patted her back and repeated, "It was only a movie, darling."

Shay rolled her eyes heavenward, impatient with her mother's sentimentality over a silly love story. Love. Didn't her mother know that love like that was manufactured by writers and composers? It didn't exist in the real world. But the sight of Celia and John, both obviously in love, leaning into each other for support as they reached the top of the stairs, contradicted her jaded outlook. The possibility that true love did exist was a disturbing thought.

Ian was standing next to her, also looking at her parents. When they disappeared, he glanced down at Shay. His expression was infinitely tender, as if he were looking at a newborn baby.

"Your mother epitomizes everything feminine," he said. Left unsaid, Shay knew, was that her daughter didn't. Ian returned to the couch and picked up the sports magazine he'd been reading. Slouching against the cushions and propping one jean-clad leg on the knee of the other, he seemed instantly absorbed by the printed page.

More than a little miffed because he was so rudely ignoring her, Shay stalked to the table in the foyer, picked up her portfolio, and plopped determinedly into the opposite corner of the sofa Ian was sitting on.

The leather cover thumped against the back of the couch as she opened the large book. The pages rattled as she arranged and rearranged the pictures, trying to attract his attention. Under her breath, but loud enough for him to hear, she commented periodically on each picture she held in her hand.

Finally he sighed heavily and turned toward her. "I guess I'm supposed to ask what you're looking at."

Why she didn't slam the book shut at that moment and go upstairs to her room, she didn't know. Possibly because something inside her chanted that sugar attracts more flies than vinegar. In any event, she smiled winningly. "This is my portfolio. Would you like to look through it?"