Mist on the Meadow (26 page)

But Marissa wasn’t with him.

Wolf yanked open one of the doors to the
Festival Hall that ran the length of the pier. He walked inside,
navigating the corridors past restaurants and kiosks, shoulder to
shoulder with thousands of other people who’d come to ring in the
new year. Plate glass windows and doors lined the heated corridors,
tempting him to escape the inside walkways in favor of less noise
and more elbow room in spite of the cold.

As he neared the Grand Ballroom, the walls
and windows vibrated with music. People yelled at each other to be
heard.

Someone grabbed at his elbow and he heard the
timbre of a woman’s voice. Her words were lost in the din. In a
crowd this size, with all the people he interacted with through
work, he was bound to run into someone he knew. Wolf turned toward
her and rolled his eyes.

“Trisha,” he shouted at her with a forced
smile. Wolf put his hands over his ears and shrugged. They wouldn’t
be able to carry on a conversation. Trisha pointed toward the glass
doors. She couldn’t want to go outside. She wasn’t wearing a
coat.

And yet she mouthed, “Outside.” Wolf wrapped
his arms around himself and shivered. He raised his eyebrows with
the obvious question, but Trisha waved off his concern and hooked
her hand behind his elbow to lead him.

As they made their way toward the exit, a
photographer stopped them. Trish drew close beside him with a big
smile and Wolf reflexively put his arm around her waist. The
photographer put his head together with Trish’s and wrote down her
contact information. Let her deal with him. Wolf wasn’t interested
in a copy of the photo.

His ears were still ringing when they finally
stepped into the cold night air. “You’re going to freeze.” He eyed
her short, strappy dress. Goose flesh popped up on her skin and two
pebbles dotted the front of her dress.

She batted her eyelashes. “You could always
give me your coat.”

Sir Walter Raleigh he wasn’t. He might have
been, when they’d dated, but they weren’t dating anymore. “Then I’d
be cold,” he told her.

“I guess you’ll have to keep me warm some
other way.”

Distraction, standing in front of him,
inviting him to forget about Marissa for the night. And yet, he
couldn’t get Marissa out of his mind. Damn! Wolf stared at Trisha’s
lovely face, her shiny red lips, her shaded brown eyes and perfect
complexion. Perfect-looking, anyway. She’d likely spent a fortune
at the salon to achieve the perfect coif, and as he let his eyes
drift downward—again, noticing the effects of the cold—he
reflexively wrapped an arm around her narrow waist and pulled her
tight, more to warm her than out of any residual affection.

She’d served his purposes for a time, but
like the rest of them, she was no more than arm candy compared to
Marissa. Trisha was frail in his arms, insubstantial. Cold.

“You’re going to freeze, Trisha,” he said
again.

She rose up in her spiked heels until her
lips were within inches of his cheek. “Then warm me up, Wolf.”

Too easy. He’d kissed her countless times
before, but he couldn’t bring himself to accept the invitation.
Instead, he led her back inside, with a grimace at the decibel
level. He shook his head and gave her an apologetic smile before he
walked away, away from the Grand Ballroom and the deafening
noise.

And he’d turned her down why?

Wolf stomped through the corridors of the
Festival Hall. Throngs of people in shiny paper top-hats suffocated
him. He blasted through a set of glass doors outside to the
snow-piled pier.

So much for distraction. Trisha would have
gone home with him.
And he’d turned her down why?

Wolf blew out a slow breath. He knew why. How
the hell had Marissa become so engrained in such a short period of
time? And here he stood, hoping—
hoping
—she’d call. Wolf
reached for his still silent cell phone and shook his head
again.

Trisha wasn’t Marissa. No one was like
Marissa, and he and his stupid family had scared her away. Wolf
leaned over the fence and stared into the icy, dark waves
below.

How many times had he wished he was in that
car with his parents? Before he met Marissa . . .

Wolf straightened and chuckled. How ironic
that she’d become his new benchmark. His life before he’d met her,
and his life now. Whatever the future held for them, whether she
never called him again or whether they lived happily ever after—he
scoffed at the implausibility of that happening—she had awakened
that part of him that had been dormant for the last eleven years,
that part of him that he’d never developed after the accident.

So much for distraction. But he wasn’t going
to make the drive back to Harper Manor tonight, not on amateur
night, not on the expressway.

And he would not be held captive by a silent
cell phone. Wolf powered it down and went home, to his condo in the
city.

* * *

Marissa curled up in her flannel pajamas at
the Extended Stay with Hex on her lap, a bowl of popcorn on the end
table while she watched black-and-white Fred and Ginger movies.

“Someday,” she told the cat, “I’m going to go
to the French Riviera and waltz on a patio under the stars in a
flowing ball gown.” She scratched Hex’s ears and ran a hand along
his soft, gray fur. His body rumbled beneath her touch. “Someday,”
she repeated with a smile.

She gazed down at Hex’s sky blue eyes and he
closed them contentedly.

Alone in a hotel room with her cat. How
pathetic. She didn’t have to be alone. Her parents always had a New
Year’s party. With their friends, not hers. Angela was normally
back from Phoenix by this time, but not this year. She could have
gone out with Max and Noah, or even Becky.

Marissa looked at the television again and
watched the elegant dance steps. Did Wolf know how to dance?

Marissa giggled. What a joke, imagining Wolf
Harper in a tux, waltzing his way around the French
Riviera—brooding, angry Wolf Harper.

Passionate, intense Wolf Harper, the man
with the two-shooter.

She’d never been so insatiable with Gary
Kinsey. One-and-done.

Marissa continued to giggle until tears
welled in her eyes. What had come over her?

Wolf Harper had come over her.

She squeezed her eyes closed against the
lurch in her belly that sent heat all through her body.

Start the New Year with a bang
, she
giggled again.

Hex gave a meow and jumped from her lap.

Marissa stared at her cell phone. Did she
dare make a booty call to Wolf Harper? Ten o’clock on New Year’s
Eve. Harper Manor was fifteen minutes away.

She licked her dry lips, cast a last look at
Fred and Ginger and dialed Wolf’s cell phone—which went straight to
voicemail.

And what was she supposed to say? “Oh, sorry
if I’ve been avoiding you but I thought we could bring the new year
in with a bang?”

Okay. Bad idea.

Marissa hung up without leaving a
message.

Marissa woke up with Hex curled on her
stomach. Her back ached from sleeping on the couch, but she was
afraid to move for fear of disturbing Hex’s peaceful sleep. Marissa
rolled her eyes. She was sacrificing her comfort for that of a
cat.

“Sorry, buddy.” She picked him up and sat
upright.

The sun was hours from rising, but Marissa’s
body clock didn’t reset for holidays.

Happy New Year.

Marissa pushed to her feet and stretched her
cramped muscles. The café was closed, but there were likely new
online orders. With Angela gone to Phoenix, it would be better to
get them done. The way business was going, there would be even more
orders tomorrow.

Hex wound his tail around her ankles and
mewed for his breakfast. Marissa yawned and stretched one last
time. “You won’t starve,” she assured the cat, and walked to the
kitchen to fill his bowl.

She showered and dressed before she filled
her travel mug with coffee. Marissa had expected to be slapped by
the cold when she walked outside the hotel to her car, but the
temperature hovered at or above the freezing mark.

Shades of blue and gray brightened the
eastern horizon. She decided to take advantage of the milder
weather and walk the few block to the café.

With most of the sidewalks as yet unshoveled,
Marissa walked in the street. The rest of the world was still
asleep, her only companion the occasional crackle of wind through
the frozen trees. This was her favorite time of day.

She turned a corner and trod down the road
where she’d first met Wolf, a subdivision on her left side and
undeveloped land on her right. She reached the meadow that opened
to the woods, the same woods where she’d seen the stag that
heralded Uncle Balt’s final visit. Hot tears warmed her cheeks.
Marissa brushed them with mittened hands, and through bleary eyes,
a shimmering, glowing man walked out of the woods. She pulled a
mitten off and ran a finger over her eyes to clear the tears, not
quite sure if wishful thinking had produced Uncle Balt’s image. As
much as she wanted to run over and hug him, the woods behind Uncle
Balt were visible through his core.

“Ah,
meine Liebling
. Do not be so sad.
There is so much for to be happy!”

Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“Uncle Balt.”

“I will walk a ways with you, yes?”

“You’ll only disappear again.”

He gave her a nod. “Perhaps, but we can enjoy
each other’s company while I am here?”

Marissa squeezed her eyes shut.

“It is better that I don’t come?” he
asked.

Marissa shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“It is so very difficult, then? This
knowing?”

They’d reached the edge of the clearing and
Uncle Balt stopped. Marissa looked at the edge of the woods. “You
can’t go any farther, can you?”

“It would seem not.”

She took a deep breath. “Yes, it is
difficult, but more so because I wasn’t prepared for this. You
changed my life overnight.”

“Did I? Did you not see the quiet moments
before? All your life, even?”

Marissa closed her eyes. “That was
different.”

“You always knew when I would arrive. How
many things have you known over the course of your life? Things
other people didn’t.”

“That was different,” she repeated.

Uncle Balt cocked an eyebrow. “Was it?”

Marissa huddled into her coat. “Anyone might
have known the things I did if they’d only been paying attention.
Keen powers of observation.”

“My Marissa.” He shook his head. “You want an
argument? Would that make you feel better? You have been in
training for this all your life, whether you want to see it or not.
It wasn’t such a surprise. Not really.”

A semi-transparent hand touched her cheek,
but there was no sensation. Memories forced Marissa’s eyes closed.
Max refusing to play hide and seek with her because she always knew
where he was hiding. Holding pieces of mail and doing her “magic
act,” telling people what was inside. Even her baking. Singing
while she made that birthday cake for Gary Kinsey, the night he’d
sworn his love for her for the first time. “Because of the cake?”
she said out loud and opened her eyes. In hindsight, Gary had been
a high school crush. The break-up hadn’t hurt as much as she’d
expected it to.

“I should have known,” she said.

“Now that you’re twenty-five, you know what
to do with it,” Uncle Balt said.

Marissa snorted a laugh. “That’s definitely
not true.”

“Better than when you were twelve, or
fifteen, or seventeen and in love with Gary Kinsey.”

He had a point there. Standing still, the
cold was more invasive. Marissa wrapped her arms around herself.
“Will you always be here?” She nodded at the woods.

Uncle Balt smiled. “Always in the quiet
moments.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“My life is over,
Liebling
. My spirit
will always be with you,” he placed a fist to the center of his
chest, “in your heart.”

Marissa looked away. The sky was brighter,
the sun inched up over the horizon. When she turned back, Uncle
Balt was gone, but at the edge of the woods, a stag loped into the
underbrush.

A tear slid down her cheek. She trudged ahead
to the corner, to the stoplight where she’d met Wolf.

Now I’m going to be late
. She saw the
accident that introduced her to Wolf, from his vantage point, and
laughed while she watched herself through his eyes, arms flailing
and temper flaring. Like a thermal image, he warmed when he met her
eyes. Could she bewitch him with just a glance? If that were true,
he’d bewitched her, too.

She continued, and from a block away, she saw
Officer Don in the café parking lot. She hadn’t bewitched him. She
could open up a “fortunes told with purchase of a dozen cookies”
counter in the café, although he had yet to confirm that he’d found
the missing ring.

Marissa snorted. He’d confirm it. Deep down,
she knew he would. Uncle Balt was right. This knowing thing had
always been there, simmering beneath the surface.

Don got out of his cruiser as she approached.
He wrapped his arms around himself and stomped his feet. “Happy New
Year.”

“Same to you.” Marissa unlocked the door and
gave him a smile.

“Thought the café was closed today.”

“Then why are you here?”

“It’s off the road while still providing a
place to see the rest of town. A quiet place to hang out for a
while. What about you?”

Marissa shrugged. “There are always special
orders to prepare. Thanks for the extra security detail.”

“Say, about the ring. Judy wasn’t in your
shop. How’d you know?”

“I’m psychic?” She tried for humor, but he
wasn’t laughing.

“Is that true?”