Page 2 of Courting Catherine
But as with any situation Trent found himself in, he decided to make it work for him. While his car was being dealt with, he made half a dozen calls to his office back in Boston—putting the fear of God into a flurry of secretaries, assistants and junior vice-presidents. It put him in a slightly better frame of mind.
He lunched on the terrace of a small restaurant, paying more attention to the paperwork he took from his briefcase than the excellent lobster salad or balmy spring breeze. He checked his watch often, drank too much coffee and, with impatient brown eyes, studied the traffic that streamed up and down the street.
Two of the waitresses on lunch shift discussed him at some length. It was early April, several weeks before the height of the season, so the restaurant wasn’t exactly hopping with customers.
They agreed that this one was a beaut, from the top of his dark blond head to the tips of his highly polished Italian shoes. They agreed that he was a businessman, and animportantone, because of the leather briefcase and spiffy gray suit and tie. Plus, he wore cufflinks. Gold ones.
They decided, as they rolled flatware into napkins for the next shift, that he was young for it, no more than thirty. Outrageously handsome was their unanimous vote while they took turns refilling his coffee cup and getting closer looks. Nice clean features, they agreed, with a kind of polished air that would have been just a tad slick if it hadn’t been for the eyes.
They were dark and broody and impatient, making the waitresses speculate as to whether he’d been stood up by a woman. Though they couldn’t imagine any female in her right mind doing so.
Trent paid no more attention to them than he would have to anyone who performed a paid service. That disappointed them. The whopping tip he left made up for it nicely. It would have surprised him that the tip would have meant more to the waitresses if he had offered a smile with it.
He relocked his briefcase and prepared to take the brisk walk to the mechanic at the end of town. He wasn’t a cold man and wouldn’t have considered himself aloof. As a St. James, he had grown up with servants who had quietly and efficiently gone about the business of making his life simpler. He paid well, even generously. If he didn’t show any overt appreciation or personal interest, it was simply because it never occurred to him.
At the moment, his mind was on the deal he hoped to close by the end of the week. Hotels were his business, with the emphasis on luxury and resorts. The summer before, Trent’s father had located a particular property while he and his fourth wife had been yachting in Frenchman Bay. While Trenton St. James II’s instincts as to women were notoriously skewed, his business instincts were always on target.
He’d begun negotiations almost immediately for the buy of the enormous stone house overlooking Frenchman Bay. His appetite had been whetted by the reluctance of the owners to sell what had to be a white elephant as a private home. As expected, the senior Trenton had been turning things his way, and the deal was on the way to being set.
Then Trent had found the whole business dumped into his lap as his father was once again tangled in a complicated divorce.
Wife number four had lasted almost eighteen months, Trent mused. Which was two months longer than wife number three. Trent accepted, fatalistically, that there was bound to be a number five around the corner. The old man was as addicted to marriage as he was to real estate.
Trent was determined to close the deal on The Towers before the ink had dried on this last divorce decree. As soon as he got his car out of the garage, he would drive up and take a firsthand look at the place.
Because of the time of year, many of the shops were closed as he walked through town, but he could see the possibilities. He knew that during the season the streets of Bar Harbor were crammed with tourists with credit cards and travelers’ checks at the ready. And tourists needed hotels. He had the statistics in his briefcase. With solid planning, he figured The Towers would cull a hefty percentage of that tourist trade within fifteen months.
All he had to do was convince four sentimental women and their aunt to take the money and run.
He checked his watch again as he turned the corner toward the mechanic’s. Trent had given him precisely two hours to deal with whatever malfunction the BMW had suffered. That, he was convinced, was enough.
Of course he could have taken the company plane up from Boston. It would have been more practical, and Trent was nothing if not a practical man. But he’d wanted to drive. Needed to, he admitted. He’d needed those few hours of quiet and solitude.
Business was booming, but his personal life was going to hell.
Who would have thought that Marla would suddenly shove an ultimatum down his throat? Marriage or nothing. It still baffled him. She had known since the beginning of their relationship that marriage had never been an option. He had no intention of taking a ride on the roller coaster his father seemed to thrive on.
Not that he wasn’t—hadn’t been—fond of her. She was lovely and well-bred, intelligent and successful in her field of fashion design. With Marla, there was never a hair out of place, and Trent appreciated that kind of meticulousness in a woman. Just as he had appreciated her practical attitude toward their relationship.
She had claimed not to want marriage or children or pledges of undying love. Trent considered it a personal betrayal that she suddenly changed her tune and demanded it all.
He hadn’t been able to give it to her.
They had parted, stiff as strangers, only two weeks before. She was already engaged to a golf pro.
It stung. But even as it stung, it convinced him he had been right all along. Women were unstable, fickle creatures, and marriage was a bloodless kind of suicide.
She hadn’t even loved him. Thank God. She had simply wanted “commitment and stability,” as she had put it. Trent felt, smugly, that she would soon find out marriage was the last place to find either.
Because he knew it was unproductive to dwell on mistakes, he allowed thoughts of Marla to pass out of his mind. He would take a vacation from females, he decided.
Trent paused outside the white cinder-block building with its scatter of cars in the lot. The sign over the open garage doors read C.C.’s Automovation. Just beneath the title, which Trent found ostentatious, was an offer of twenty-four-hour towing, complete auto repairs and refinishing—foreign and domestic—and free estimates.
Through the doors, he could hear rock music. Trent let out a sigh as he went in.
The hood was up on his BMW, and a pair of dirty boots peeked out from beneath the car. The mechanic was tapping the toes of the boots together in time to the din of music. Frowning, Trent glanced around the garage area. It smelled of grease and honeysuckle—a ridiculous combination. The place itself was a disorganized and grimy mess of tools and auto parts, something that looked as though it might have been a fender, and a coffee maker that was boiling whatever was inside it down to black sludge.
There was a sign on the wall that stated No Checks Cashed, Not Even For You.
