The moment she woke, Whitney knew he was gone. It wasn’t a matter of the bed being empty beside her. Another woman might have assumed he’d gone out for coffee or a walk. Another woman might have called his name in a husky sleepy voice.
She knew he was gone.
It was in her nature to face things directly when there wasn’t a choice. Whitney rose, pulled back the blinds, and began to pack. Because silence was unbearable, she switched on the radio without bothering to fiddle with the dial.
She noticed the boxes tumbled on the floor. Determined to keep occupied, she began to open them.
Her fingers slid over the flimsy lingerie Doug had picked out for her. She gave a quick, tilted smile at the receipt with her credit-card imprint. Because she’d decided that cynicism would be her best defense, Whitney slipped into the pale blue teddy. After all, she’d paid for it.
Tossing the box aside, she drew off the lid of the next. The dress was rich, rich blue, the color, she remembered, of the butterflies she’d seen and admired. Cynicism and all other defenses threatened to crumble. Swallowing tears, she bundled the dress back into the box. It wouldn’t travel well, she told herself, and yanked a pair of wrinkled slacks out of her pack.
In a few hours, she’d be back in New York, in her own milieu, surrounded by her own friends. Doug Lord would be a vague, and expensive, memory. That was all. Dressed, packed, and utterly calm, she went to check out and meet her father.
He was already in the lobby, pacing, impatient. Deals were cooking. The ice-cream business was dog-eat-dog. “Where’s your boyfriend?” he demanded.
“Daddy, really.” Whitney signed her bill with a flourish and a completely steady hand. “A woman doesn’t have boyfriends. She has lovers.” She smiled at the bellboy and followed him out to the car her father had waiting.
He huffed, not entirely pleased with her terminology. “So where is he?”
“Doug?” She gave her father an unconcerned look over her shoulder as she climbed into the back seat of the limo. “Why I have no idea. Paris perhaps—he had a ticket.”
Scowling, MacAllister plopped back against the seat. “What the hell’s going on, Whitney?”
“I think I might spend a few days on Long Island when we get back. I tell you, all this traveling’s exhausting.”
“Whitney.” He clamped a hand over hers, using the tone he’d used since she was two. It had never been overly successful. “Why did he leave?”
She reached in her father’s pocket, drew out his cigarette case, and chose one. Staring straight ahead, she tapped the cigarette on the dull gold lid. “Because that’s his style. Slipping out in the middle of the night without a sound, without a word. He’s a thief, you know.”
“So he told me last night while you were busy bullshitting Bennett. Dammit, Whitney, by the time he was finished, my hair was standing on end. It was worse than reading the report from the detective. The two of you nearly got yourselves killed half a dozen times.”
“It concerned us a bit at the time, too,” she murmured.
“You’d do my ulcer a world of good if you’d marry that empty-headed, weak-jawed Carlyse.”
“Sorry, then I’d have one.”
He studied the cigarette she’d yet to light. “I got the impression you were—attached to this young thief you’d picked up.”
“Attached.” The cigarette snapped in her fingers. “No, it was strictly business.” Tears welled up and spilled over but she continued to speak calmly. “I was bored and he provided entertainment.”
“Entertainment?”
“Expensive entertainment,” she added. “The bastard’s gone off owing me twelve thousand, three hundred and fifty-eight dollars and forty-seven cents.”
MacAllister took out his handkerchief and dried her cheeks. “Nothing like losing a few thousand to bring on the waterworks,” he murmured. “Often happens to me.”
“He didn’t even say good-bye,” she whispered. Curling into her father, she wept because there didn’t seem to be anything else she could do.
New York in August can be vicious. The heat can hang, shimmer, gloat, and roll. When a garbage strike coincided with a heat wave, tempers became as ripe as the air. Even the more fortunate who could summon an air-conditioned limo at the snap of a finger tended to turn surly after two weeks of ninety-degree-plus weather. It was a time when anyone who could arrange it fled the city for the islands, for the country, for Europe.
Whitney had had her fill of traveling.
She stuck it out in Manhattan when the majority of her friends and acquaintances jumped ship. She turned down offers for a cruise on the Aegean, a week on the Italian Riviera, and a month-long honeymoon in the country of her choice.