Dream Trilogy (44 page)

If she could just talk to them now, she thought. Just try to understand why her father had done what he had done. But what comfort would there be in that? What excuse could possibly justify it?

She had to concentrate on the now. Had to find a way to live in the now. And yet how could she not drift back?

It was the house, most of all, she supposed. It held so many memories. There was history here, eras, people, ghosts. Like the cliffs, the forests, those wildly shaped cypress trees, it held magic.

She turned her face into the pillow, encased in Irish linen. Ann always saw to it that the bed linen was scented lightly with lemon. There were flowers on the night table, a Waterford vase filled with sweet-smelling freesia. A note was propped against it. Recognizing Laura’s handwriting, she stirred herself to reach out.

Kate, I didn’t want to wake you when I left. Margo and I are at the shop this morning. We don’t want to see you there. Annie has agreed to lock you in your room if necessary. You’re to take your next dose at eleven sharp, unless you sleep through it. One of us will come home at lunchtime. You’re expected to stay in bed. If you ever scare us like this again . . . I’ll threaten you in person. I love you, Laura.

Just like her, Kate mused, and set the note aside. But she couldn’t very well stay in bed all day. Too much thinking time in bed. No, she decided to call it by its name: brooding time. So she would find something to keep her from brooding. Her briefcase had to be somewhere, she decided. She’d just—

“And what do you think you’re about, young lady?” Ann Sullivan stood in the doorway with a tray in her hand and a hard light in her eyes.

“I was going to . . . go to the bathroom. That’s all.” Cautiously Kate finished climbing out of bed and ducked into the adjoining bath.

Smiling, Ann set down the tray and moved to fluff the pillows. All her girls thought they could lie when the chips were down, she mused. And only Margo was any good at it. She waited, her back soldier straight, until Kate came back in. Then Ann merely pointed at the bed.

“Now, I’m going to see to it that you eat, take your medicine, and behave yourself.” With smooth efficiency, Ann fit the tray over Kate’s lap. “An ulcer, is it? Well, we’re not putting up with that. No, indeed. Now Mrs. Williamson has fixed you some nice soft scrambled eggs and toast. And there’s herb tea. She says chamomile will soothe your innards. You’ll eat the fruit too. The melon’s very mild.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She felt as though she could eat for hours. “Annie, I’m sorry.”

“For what? For being knotheaded? Well, you should be.” But she sat on the edge of the bed and, in the time-honored fashion, laid her hand over Kate’s brow to test for fever. “Working yourself up until you’re sick. And look at you, Miss
Kate, nothing but a bag of bones. Eat every bite of those eggs.”

“I thought it was heartburn,” she murmured, then bit her lip. “Or cancer.”

“What is this nonsense?” Appalled, Ann snagged Kate’s chin in her hand. “You were worrying you had cancer and did nothing about it?”

“Well, I figured if it was heartburn I could live with it. And if it was cancer, I’d just die anyway.” She grimaced at the violent glare. “I feel like such a fool.”

“I’m glad to hear it, for you are.” Clucking her tongue, Annie poured Kate’s tea. “Miss Kate, I love you, but never in my life have I been more angry with anyone. No, you don’t. Don’t you dare tear up while I’m yelling at you.”

Kate sniffled, took the tissue Ann held out, and blew her nose fiercely. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Be sorry, then.” Exasperated, she handed over another tissue. “I thought Margo was the only one of you who could make me crazy. You may have waited twenty years to do it, my girl, but you’ve matched her. Did you once tell your family you were feeling poorly? Did you once think what it would mean to us if you ended up in the hospital?”

“I thought I could handle it.”

“Well, you couldn’t, could you?”

“No.”

“Eat those eggs before they’re cold. There’s Mrs. Williamson down in the kitchen, fretting over you. And old Joe the gardener cutting his precious freesia so you could wake to them. That’s to say nothing of Margo, who kept me on the phone thirty minutes or more this morning, so worked up over you, she is. And Mr. Josh, who came by and looked in on you before he would go on to his work. And do you think Miss Laura got a wink of sleep last night?”

As she lectured, Ann piled toast with raspberry preserves and handed it to Kate. “That’s to say nothing of how the Templetons are going to feel when they hear.”

“Oh, Annie, please don’t—”

“Don’t tell them?” Ann said, with a fierce look at Kate. “Is that what you were going to say, missy? Don’t tell the people who loved and cared for you, who gave you a home and a family?”

No one, Kate thought miserably, piled on jam or shame like Ann Sullivan. “No. I’ll call them myself. Today.”

“That’s better. And when you’re feeling more yourself, you’re going to go and thank Mr. De Witt in person for taking care of you.”

“I . . .” Foreseeing fresh humiliation, Kate toyed with her eggs. “I did thank him.”

“And you’ll thank him again.” She glanced up as a maid knocked quietly on the open door.

“Excuse me. These just arrived for Miss Powell.” She carried in a long white florist’s box and set it on the foot of the bed.

“Thank you, Jenny. Wait just a moment and we’ll see what vase we’ll use. No, you finish eating,” Ann continued. “I’ll open this.”

She undid the bow, opened the lid, and the room was filled with the scent of roses. Two dozen long-stemmed yellows bloomed against a bed of glossy green. She allowed herself one quiet, feminine sigh.

“Fetch the Baccarat, will you, Jenny? The tall one in the library breakfront.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now I know I’m sick.” Cheered, Kate plucked up the envelope. “Imagine Margo sending me a bunch of flowers.” But when she tore out the card, her jaw dropped.

“Not from Margo, I take it.” With the privilege of time and affection, Ann slipped the card out of Kate’s fingers and read, “ ‘Relax, Byron.’ Well, well, well.”

“It’s nothing to ‘well’ about. He’s just feeling sorry for me.”

“Two dozen yellow roses are something aside from sympathy, girl. That’s moving toward romance.”

“Hardly.”

“Seduction, anyway.”

Kate remembered the wild embrace in his kitchen. Hot, intense, rudely interrupted. “Maybe. Sort of. If I was the seducing type.”

“We all are. Thank you, Jenny. I’ll take it from here.”

Ann took the vase from the maid and went into the bathroom to fill it. She wasn’t surprised, and not just a little pleased, to see Kate sniffing thoughtfully at one of the blooms when she came back.

“Drink your tea now while I arrange these. It’s a relaxing thing, arranging flowers.”

She took a pair of scissors from the old kneehole desk, spread the tissue that had covered the flowers on the dresser, and got to work. “Something you take your time about, enjoy. Plunking them by the handful into a handy vase doesn’t bring any joy.”

Kate dragged her thoughts away from detailing a list of Byron De Witt’s qualities. Confident, kind, interfering, sexy, meddlesome. Sexy. “It gets the job done.”

“If that’s all you’re after. In my opinion, Miss Kate, you’ve always been in a hurry to get the job done, whatever it may be. You’ve forgotten the pleasure of doing. Rushing through something to get to the next something might be productive, but it’s not fun.”

“I have fun,” Kate muttered.

“Do you now? From what I’ve seen, you’ve even turned your weekly treasure hunts into a scheduled chore. Let me ask you this. If you were, by some wild chance in your quest for efficiency, to stumble over Seraphina’s dowry, what would you do with it?”

“Do with it?”

“That’s what I asked. Would you take the riches and sail around the world, lie on some lazy beach, buy a fancy car? Or would you invest it in mutual funds and tax-free bonds?”

“Properly invested, money makes money.”

Ann slipped a stem gently into the vase. “And for what? So it can pile up neatly in some vault? Is that the only means
to the end, or end to the means? Not that you haven’t done a tidy job with helping me build up a fine nest egg, darling, but you’ve got to have dreams. And sometimes they have to be beyond your immediate reach.”

“I have plans.”

“I didn’t say plans. I said dreams.” Wasn’t it odd, Ann mused. Her own daughter had always dreamed too much. Miss Laura had dreamed simple dreams that had broken her heart. And little Miss Kate had never let herself dream enough. “What are you waiting for, darling? To be as old as me before you indulge yourself, enjoy yourself?”

“You’re not old, Annie,” Kate said softly. “You’ll never be old.”

“Tell that to the lines that crop up on my face daily.” But she smiled as she turned. “What are you waiting for, Katie?”

“I don’t know. Exactly.” Her gaze shifted to the crystal vase behind Ann, filled to bursting with yellow flowers that glowed like sunlight. She could, if she bothered to, count on one hand the number of times a man had sent her roses. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

“Then it’s time you did. Top of the list is what makes Kate happy. You’re good at list making, God knows,” she said briskly, then went to the closet for the robe Kate always left in her room at Templeton House. “Now you can sit out on the terrace in the sun for a while. You sit there and do nothing but dream for a bit.”

A week of pampering was excellent medicine. For Kate it was also nearly an overdose. Yet anytime she made noises about going home and getting back to work, everyone within earshot ganged up on her.

Telling herself she would turn over a new leaf if it killed her, she struggled to let it ride, to go with the flow, to take life as it came.

And wondered how anyone could live that way.

She reminded herself that it was a gorgeous evening. That she was sitting in the garden with a child snuggled in her lap, another at her feet. Her ulcer—if it was an ulcer—hadn’t given her any real trouble in days.

And she had found there, in the home of her childhood, a peace that had been missing.

“I wish you could live with us forever and ever, Aunt Kate.” Kayla looked up, her gray eyes soft in her angel’s face. “We’d never let you get sick or worry too much.”

“Aunt Margo says you’re a professional nitpicker.” Ali
giggled at the term and carefully brushed pink polish on Kate’s toenails. “What’s a nit?”

“Aunt Margo.” Wasn’t it bad enough, Kate thought, that she was going to have hot-pink toenails, without adding insult to injury? “Good thing for her I happen to like nits.”

“If you didn’t go back to your apartment, we could play with you every day.” For Kayla, this was the ultimate bribe. “And you and Mama could have tea parties like Annie said you used to when you were little.”

“We can all have tea parties when I come visit,” Kate reminded her. “That’s more special.”

“But if you lived here, you wouldn’t have to pay rent.” Ali capped the polish and looked entirely too wise for a ten year old. “Until you regain your financial feet.”

A fresh smile flitted around Kate’s mouth. “Where’d you get that?”

“You’re always saying stuff like that.” Ali smiled and pressed her cheek against Kate’s knee. “And Mama’s working a lot now and nothing’s the way it used to be. It’s better with you here.”

“I like being with you, too.”

Touched and torn, Kate stroked Ali’s curly hair. A sunshine-yellow butterfly flitted through the air and landed gracefully in the cup of a red petunia. For a moment, Kate caressed the child and watched the butterfly’s wings gently open and close as it fed.

How hard would it be, she wondered, to simply stay here, like this, forever? Just drift. Forget everything. Not hard at all, she realized. And wasn’t that part of the reason it wasn’t possible for her?

“I have to go back to my own place. That doesn’t mean I won’t spend lots of time with you. Every Sunday for sure, so we can find all of Seraphina’s gold.”

She looked up in relief at the sound of footsteps. If this kept up, she’d be ready to agree to anything her nieces wanted. “There’s the nit now.”

Margo only raised an elegant eyebrow as the girls giggled.
“I’ll consider that a private joke. I’m too jazzed to be annoyed with you. Look!” After tugging up her sleek linen tunic, she pulled out the elastic waist of her slacks. “I couldn’t get my skirt zipped this morning. I’m starting to show.” Her face glowing, she turned to the side. “Can you tell?”

“You look like a beached whale,” Kate said dryly, but Kayla bounced up and rushed over to press an ear against Margo’s tummy.

“I can’t hear him yet,” she complained. “Are you sure he’s in there?”

“Absolutely sure, but I can’t guarantee the
he
part.” Abruptly her lips trembled, her eyes filled. “Kate, it moved. This afternoon I was helping a customer decide between an Armani and a Donna Karan, and I felt this, this fluttering. I felt the baby move. I felt—I felt—” She broke off and burst into wild tears.

“Oh, Jesus.” Jolting up, Kate gathered the goggle-eyed girls and nudged them toward the flagstone path. “This is a good thing,” she assured them. “She’s crying because she’s happy. Tell Mrs. Williamson we want a whole jug of lemonade, the kind she makes that fizzes.”

Whirling back to Margo, she hugged her close. “I was only kidding before. You’re not fat.”

“I want to be fat,” Margo sobbed. “I want to waddle. I want to stop being able to sleep on my stomach.”

“Okay.” Torn between amusement and concern, Kate patted her. “Okay, honey, you will. In fact, I think you’re already starting to waddle. A little.”

“Really?” Margo sniffed, caught herself. “Oh, shit, listen to me. I’m crazy. I’m doing this kind of thing all the time these days. I felt the baby move, Kate. I’m going to have a baby. I don’t know anything about being a mother. I’m so scared. I’m so happy. Hell, I’ve wrecked my mascara.”

“Thank God, she’s coming back.” A little shaky herself, she eased Margo into a chair. “What does Josh do when you have one of these crying jags?”

“Passes the tissues.”

“Great.” Without much hope, Kate searched her pockets. “I don’t have any.”

“I do.” Margo sniffed and blew and sighed. “Wacky hormones.” She used a fresh tissue to dab, then ran an expert hand over her fancy French braid. “I came out here to see how you were feeling.”

“Unlike you, there doesn’t seem to be anything going on in my stomach. It’s fine. I think that ulcer business was just bullshit.”

Recovered, Margo lifted a brow. “Oh, do you? Do you really?”

Because she recognized that tone, Kate braced for a fight. “Don’t start on me.”

“I’ve waited for days to start on you. But you’re feeling fine now. So I can tell you, you’re an insensitive, selfish idiot. You sent everyone who has the poor judgment to care about you into a tailspin of worry.”

“Oh, and it would have been sensitive and selfless of me to whine and complain—which you’re an expert at—and—”

“Take care of yourself,” Margo finished. “See a doctor. No, not you, you’re too smart for that, too busy for that.”

“Get off my back.”

“Pal, I’ve just climbed on, and I’m staying there like that monkey in the story. You’ve had a week of everyone patting your head and stroking you. Now you can take your dose of reality. Mr. and Mrs. T are on their way back here.”

Guilt heaped on Kate’s head. “Why? There’s no need for them to come all this way. It’s just a stupid ulcer.”

“Ah, now you admit it’s an ulcer.” Margo popped up again, whirled around the chair. “If this was a twelve-step program, you’d have made it to step one. They’d have been on the first plane the minute Laura called them, but she and Josh convinced them everything was under control and to finish up their business first. But nothing would stop them from seeing for themselves that their Kate was well.”

“I talked to them myself. I told them it was nothing major.”

“No, no, nothing major. You get suspended under suspicion
of embezzlement, end up in the ER. Nothing for them to worry about.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I—”

“Josh is furious, blaming it all on Bittle, and beating himself up because he didn’t jump on them the minute they axed you.”

“That has nothing to do with it.” Kate sprang up as well, her shouts matching Margo’s decibel for decibel. “Josh has nothing to do with it.”

“That’s just like you. That’s just perfectly like you. Nobody has anything to do with anything when it applies to you. That’s why Laura’s been blaming herself for not paying attention to how you were feeling, what you were doing. That doesn’t mean a damn to you.”

With fizzing lemonade sloshing in a glass pitcher, Laura all but ran toward the sounds of battle. “What’s going on here? Margo, stop yelling at her.”

“Shut up,” Margo and Kate shouted in unison as they faced off.

“I could hear you all the way in the kitchen.” Struggling not to slam glass on glass, Laura set the pitcher down on the table. Wide-eyed and fascinated, her daughters watched the three-way bout.

“I have to yell,” Margo insisted. “To get the sound through that thick head of hers. You’re too busy feeling sorry for her to yell.”

“Don’t drag Laura into this.” But even as she said it, Kate whirled on Laura. “And you have no business blaming yourself for my problems. You are not responsible for me.”

“If you took better care of yourself,” Laura snapped back, “no one would have to be responsible for you.”

“Ladies.” Not sure whether he should be amused or wary, Josh stepped behind his nieces, took the glasses they carried out of their hands. “Is this any way to throw a party?”

“Stay out of this.” Kate’s voice vibrated with fury. “All
of you stay out of my life. I don’t need to be watched over and worried over. I’m perfectly capable—”

“Of making yourself sick,” Margo finished.

“Everybody gets sick,” Kate roared. “Everybody has pain.”

“And those who are capable, seek help.” Laura put her hands on Kate’s shoulders and firmly shoved her into a chair. “If you’d had any sense, you’d have gone to the doctor, gone into the hospital for tests. Instead, you act like an idiot and send the entire family into an uproar.”

“I couldn’t go to the hospital. You know I can’t. . . I can’t.”

Remembering, Laura rubbed her hands over her face. This is where temper got you, she thought. Sniping at a hurting friend. “Okay.” Her voice gentle now, she eased onto the arm of Kate’s chair. When her eyes met Margo’s, she saw that Margo had also remembered Kate’s shuddering childhood fear. “That’s done now. You have to start taking care so it doesn’t happen again.”

“Which means you have to start practicing to be human,” Margo said, but there wasn’t any sting in it.

“Are they still mad?” Kayla whispered, still clutching Josh’s trouser leg with one hand.

“Maybe a little, but I think it’s safe now.”

“Mama never yells.” Unsettled, uneasy, Ali chewed on her nails. “She never yells.”

“She used to yell at me. It takes a lot to make her yell. It has to really, really matter. And once she hit me right in the nose,” Josh said.

Fascinated, Kayla reached up and rubbed her fingers over Josh’s nose as he bent down. “Did it bleed and everything?”

“And everything. Kate and Margo had to pull her off me. Then she felt really bad.” Then he grinned. “Even though I started it. What do you say we have some of that lemonade?”

Ali walked behind her uncle and studied her mother with a curious and considering eye.

* * *

It had to be done, Kate reminded herself. It was Sunday morning. Her aunt and uncle were expected by mid-afternoon. Before she faced them, she had to face Byron.

It was her new plan for a healthy life. Deal with your personal and emotional problems as carefully as you dealt with the practical ones. Why, she wondered, was it so much harder?

She’d secretly hoped he wouldn’t be home. A lot of people went to brunch on Sunday mornings, or to the beach. Somewhere. But both of his cars were in the drive. Even parked behind them, she could hear the music pounding out of the windows. Creedence Clearwater Revival. She spent a moment listening to John Fogerty’s fervent warning about a bad moon on the rise.

She hoped it wasn’t an omen.

It was difficult to reconcile a man with his looks—smooth, elegant—and his obvious preference for down-and-dirty rock and edgy Motown. Well, she wasn’t here to analyze his musical tastes. She was here to thank him and then turn the page on this awkward chapter in her life.

Prompting herself as she went, Kate got out of the car, started toward the house. She would be casual, brief, friendly, cheerful. She would turn the whole matter into a joke on herself, show the proper appreciation for his consideration and concern. And get out.

She drew a breath, rubbed her hands over the thighs of her jeans, then knocked. And laughed at herself. Superman wouldn’t have heard a knock over the blast of CCR. She pressed the doorbell hard. At the tinny notes of “Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here” she gaped in shock, then shook with laughter. Enjoying the absurdity, she pressed it again, then a third time.

He came to the door, sweaty and incredibly sexy in tattered shorts and a sweatshirt with the sleeves torn off. “The doorbell tune isn’t mine,” he said immediately. “I can’t change it until after the settlement.”

“I bet that’s what you tell everyone.” She indulged herself
with a long, thorough look. “Did I interrupt a wrestling match?”

“Weight lifting.” He stepped back. “Come on in.”

“Look, I can come back when you’re not busy pumping iron.” Christ, he had amazing muscles. Everywhere. How had she missed that?

“I was nearly finished anyway. Gatorade?” He held up the bottle in his hand, and when she shook her head, glugged from it himself. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. That’s why I dropped by. To—” He leaned close, closed the door behind her, and made her jump. “To tell you I was fine. And to thank you for . . . things. The flowers. They were nice.”

“Any flare-ups?”

“No. It’s not a big deal. Really.” Nervous, she shrugged her shoulders, rubbed her palms together. “One out of ten people ends up with a peptic ulcer. All socioeconomic levels, too. There’s no clear evidence that they hit on, you know, people with a lot of stress and harried schedules.”

“Been researching, have we?” A smile flirted around his mouth.

“Well, it seemed the logical thing to do. All in all.”

“Uh-huh. And did your research also reveal that people with chronic anxiety tend to be more susceptible and to aggravate the condition?”

She dipped her restless hands in her pockets. “Maybe.”

“Sit down.” He gestured to the single chair before he walked over to turn down the music.

“I can’t stay. My aunt and uncle are coming in today.”

“Their flight’s not due until two-thirty.”

He’d know, of course. She caught herself twisting her fingers together, and made herself stop. “Yes, but I have things to do, and so do you. So, I’ll just . . .”

She was saved by a scrabbling sound and the surprising sight of two running balls of yellow fur. “Oh, God.” Automatically, she went down on her knees and caught the
deliriously happy puppies in her arms. “Oh, you’re so cute. Aren’t you sweet? Aren’t you wonderful?”

In unanimous agreement, they bathed her face with eager tongues, yipped and wiggled, crawling over each other to get closer.

“That’s Nip and Tuck,” Byron informed her as he got down on the floor with them.

“Which is which?”