Beside a Dreamswept Sea (14 page)

“I know, darling,” Hattie said, then delicately sniffed. “Our dear hearts have a long way to go. But all their outings with the children, their sitting in the hallway talking in the dark, and now this lovely gentle kiss at our special place . . . Well, you must agree, those are fine bits of progress.” She let her gaze drift from the ceiling back out the window.

Hand in hand, Bryce and Cally were returning to the house, and Hattie’s memories drifted back to the days when she and her beloved Tony had walked that same way on those same cliffs. They had so enjoyed their quiet walks. Her chest went tight. “Oh, how I miss you, love.”

Lyssie cried.

Hattie sniffed and gave her eyes a final swipe with her lacy hankie, then stuffed it back into her dress pocket. “I know, I know. We’re needed and fulfilled in helping others. But, God forgive me, just once in a blue moon, I can’t help but wish we could help us.”

The phantom breeze formed a distinct sentence. “Me, too.”

Hattie came to a dead halt. “Tony?” Outside the Great White Room, she frowned at the ceiling, then up the stairwell leading to the attic, toward Tony’s old room. In all their years in this house, she’d intuitively known he was close. He’d given her sign upon sign. But never before had she actually heard him. Not aloud. Not directly. And never with words.

Never, until now.

It had to be a warning. Gooseflesh peppered her arms. Something about these special guests was different from any of the others who’d come here in the past five decades. Something that mattered to them
and
to her and Tony. Something that could affect them continuing to be together at Seascape Inn.

She could lose him.

He could not be here with her anymore.

The gravity of the truth pulsed through her, weighed down on her like a ton of granite, and frightened in a way she’d never before been frightened, she glared up the stairs. “I won’t have it. I just won’t have it. You made a vow to me, Anthony Freeport,” she reminded him, her heart thundering inside her head. “I’ve dreamed it a thousand times, and I
know
it happened. When you were dying on that battlefield, you promised me we’d never be apart. Don’t you dare tell me fifty years later you’re going to break your word to me. Don’t you dare!”

The wind didn’t answer.

Neither did Tony.

She wiggled her toes. “I figured we might as well be comfortable.”

“Good thinking.” He moved aside, so she could pass him in the hallway. She skirted around, and he again caught a whiff of her perfume. It wasn’t sickly sweet like so many perfumes. Cally’s Pride in a Bottle smelled fresh and clean, subtle yet quietly erotic. Did they make a masculine version? Sell it in gallons?

She stopped midway between his room and Suzie’s, then sat down on the floor. “You have me at a disadvantage.” She braced a pillow behind her back.

He leaned Collin’s cane against the wall, then dropped down beside her. “What disadvantage?”

Tugging at his sweater sleeve, she pulled him forward, then tucked the second pillow behind his back. His stomach warmed. The heat spread through his chest, then fanned out to his limbs and up his neck. It’d been a long time since anyone had bothered with small matters like his comfort. It felt good. He was ashamed to admit just how good.

“Because of all the stuff with Gregory, you know a lot more about me than I know about you.” She grabbed the ends of the afghan and shook its folds loose.

It fluttered over their legs and she tugged it up to his waist, then to her own. He could get used to this. “What do you want to know?”

Cally’s expression went serious. “Everything.”

God, but she was beautiful. “That could take a while.” A week, a month—he thought of Miss Hattie’s inference about marriage—maybe a lifetime.

Cally hiked her shoulder. “Time, I’ve got, Counselor. It’s pride, courage, and dreams that I lack.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Do we?”

She wasn’t kidding. And he innately knew his answer was far more important than her inquiring tone would lead him to believe. “Yeah, we do.” He turned more toward her, resting his shoulder against the wall. Their knees touched. He liked the feel. “Know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think you’re confused right now. You loved Gregory and he was supposed to love you back and he didn’t.”

“I don’t want to talk about me anymore.” She looked at Bryce’s tie and frowned. “I want to talk about you.”

“We are.” He checked the knot. Maybe the tie was crooked or something and that’s why she kept staring at it. “I think you’re feeling as if you gave Gregory everything, but everything wasn’t enough.”

“That’s about how I see it.”

No, it was straight. So why was she fixated on it—and still frowning? Maybe she was thinking he was a stuffed shirt again. “I loved Meriam, too.”

Cally lifted her gaze to meet his eyes. “And?”

“It wasn’t enough, either.”

“You weren’t happy?”

“No, I was.” Confused himself, he closed his eyes for a second and let his thoughts settle. “I adored Meriam. She was everything I wasn’t.” His voice dropped a notch. “Adventuresome. Free-spirited. She did exactly as she pleased and told the world to like it or kiss her—”

“Animal crackers?”

He smiled. “Yeah.”

Cally reached up and unknotted his tie. Pulled it, dragging it from his neck, then worked loose the top button on his shirt. “We’re relaxing,” she explained.

“Oh.” His throat went thick, as dry as dust.

“Oh?”

“Mmm.” He wanted to kiss her again. So much he could taste it.

She folded the tie then set it down beside her. “I take it you’re not so adventuresome, then. That’s why the trait appealed so much in Meriam.”

Cally was clever, and quick. It’d taken him years to figure that out. “I was raised in an ultraconservative family. Very loving, very normal—no major dysfunctions, or anything even close. We were happy, Cally. And I didn’t realize what a blessing that was until I met Meriam.”

“She wasn’t raised in a happy home.” The hallway cooled suddenly. Chilled, Cally pulled up the afghan and scooted closer to Bryce.

“No, she wasn’t. Would you like my sweater?”

Cally gave him a negative nod. “What was her life like?”

“A series of foster homes. So many she couldn’t recall them all. Mrs. Wiggins was one of her foster mothers. The only one, according to Meriam, who wasn’t out to make her a slave.”

“Ah, so that’s why you can’t fire her.”

He nodded. “You’d have loved Meriam, Cally. She was strong and beautiful—looked a lot like Suzie—and she did exactly as she pleased.”

“And what was that?”

“Excuse me?”

“What exactly did she please to do?” Cally sent him a questioning look. “I mean, Mrs. Wiggins took care of the kids, right? So what did Meriam do?”

“She was a photojournalist for
Conservation Today.”

“Mmm, sounds like a job with a lot of travel.”

“It was.” He rubbed at his neck. “Actually, she was pretty much always away on assignment.”

“Sounds lonely—if you’re the one left behind.”

He blinked, then blinked again. Looked at her through somber eyes. “Maybe. Sometimes. But when she was there, the whole house felt energized.”

“That would make up for it.” Cally lifted the hairbrush then began sweeping it down the lengths of her hair. “How’d the kids take her absences?”

“They were normal.” Bryce watched the brush slide down. “Meriam never stopped working. She went back on assignment weeks after the kids’ births, so they were used to her not being around.”

He then had been the primary parent and Meriam a woman who flitted through their lives on occasion. Sounded pretty one-sided. But then maybe Cally didn’t yet have the full picture of their actual lives.

She paused brushing near her ear. “How did she die, Bryce? Was she ill?”

“No.” He stared at her hand. “She was on assignment down in South America. She contracted a virus and, before the crew could get her to a hospital, she died.” His hand shook. “She’d been dead three days before her magazine contacted us.”

Cally looked back at him. “You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not.”

That truth hurt him; Cally could see that it did in his eyes. “Why?”

Bryce didn’t want to answer her. God, but he didn’t want to answer her. That radiated bitterly from him. “Meriam had left her editor as the person to notify in case of an emergency. A lot of people at the magazine didn’t know she was married.”

Cally’s jaw went slack. “But she had you and three kids.”

“It’s harder for a woman with kids in her job, Cally. It wasn’t that she didn’t want anyone to know about us, it’s that she didn’t want to not be considered for plum assignments.”

“I see.” And boy did she. From the sounds of things, Meriam had had her cake and had eaten it, too. Her career had come first. Well, considering her foster-home experiences, Cally could understand that. Meriam felt she had only Meriam to depend on. And she couldn’t risk even depending on the man she’d made her husband. Looking at what Gregory had done when Cally had put her own dreams on hold, entrusting her future to him, maybe Meriam’d had the right idea.