The Cliff House

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “I haven’t heard of anyone but I can ask around. Oh, he’s so cute. I can’t believe you’re fostering a dog. You’re the one who’s always telling me you don’t have time to take care of a pet.”

  She didn’t. But in this case, Louie needed her.

  “How did this all come about?” Bea asked.

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when you get back. I don’t feel good about leaving him with a stranger right now. He’s barely getting used to me, so I’d better not go with you to LA. It sounds fun, though. I’m sure you’ll have a great time. Enjoy some frozen Butterbeer for me.”

  “I will. If you change your mind between now and when we leave tomorrow, just let me know.”

  Bea hung up a few moments later but Daisy didn’t want to move from her spot looking out at the ocean, especially not when she realized Louie had fallen asleep on her lap.

  The dog had slept beside her bed since Gabe found him. Every morning he awakened her with a little friendly lick on her cheek that completely stole her heart.

  She had it bad for this little creature.

  She and Gabe had done their best to find the owner. She had contacted all the vet clinics and shelters in the region and had put notices all over town.

  Maybe no one would come forward, but she couldn’t imagine there wasn’t someone out there missing him. He was the sweetest dog, content to sit at her feet while she worked at her day job and then entertain himself in her studio at night.

  She sat for a few more moments, enjoying the calm, and may have drifted off like the dog. The doorbell jolted both of them awake.

  “Are you expecting anyone?” she asked Louie.

  He hopped down from her lap and raced to the door, plopping expectantly next to it until she headed over and looked through the peephole.

  Butterflies suddenly started twirling around inside her stomach when she found Gabe on the other side.

  How had she managed to forget how gorgeous he was, how he made everything inside her sigh?

  For just a moment she was tempted to ignore the doorbell and pretend she wasn’t home but Louie barked a greeting, one of the few times she’d heard him bark at anything.

  “Thanks for nothing,” she muttered, and unlocked the door.

  “Hi,” she said, hating her voice for trembling a little.

  “Hi. I was out for my walk and figured I would stop by and see how our little guy is doing.”

  “Louie is good, aren’t you, buddy?”

  The little dog wagged his tail so hard it made his giant ears quiver.

  “You still haven’t come up with another name?”

  She shrugged. “That’s the one he answers to. I don’t know if that’s really his name but it works. You like it, don’t you, Louie?”

  The dog barked and licked her hand. Gabe unexpectedly smiled and she ordered herself not to stare.

  “Louie it is, I guess,” he said.

  “Any news on his owners?” she asked, suddenly afraid that was why he had come.

  “No. I had a phone call today and one yesterday from people claiming he belonged to them. They couldn’t describe him or identify the pattern on his collar, though, so I knew they were just trying to get a free French bulldog.”

  Gabe had been deliberately vague in his description of the dog to avoid sleazy people coming forward to claim him when Louie didn’t belong to them.

  “I told you I wanted visitation,” he went on. “I came over to see if I could take him for a walk.”

  “Are you up for that? Did you have to have those stitches repaired?”

  “No. I’m fine, as long as I don’t overdo. No more cliffside rescues, I guess.”

  He smiled at her again and Daisy felt her knees go weak.

  She was an idiot.

  She steeled herself against him. “The leash I bought is in the kitchen. I’ll go grab it for you.”

  “Better yet, why don’t you come with us?”

  “You want me to go on a walk with you.”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  She did not want to do that. The man was exceedingly dangerous for her peace of mind.

  “You can keep me from falling over if I get dizzy,” he added, giving her no idea how to refuse.

  She could use the exercise, anyway. She had been sitting most of the day, poring over accounts. What would be the harm in going on a walk with him?

  “In that case, I’d better go along,” she said before she could talk herself out of it. “Cruz would never forgive me if I let you get hurt on my watch.”

  When he was happy about something, Gabe Ellison’s green eyes lit up until they were the color of new leaves unfurling on winter-bare branches.

  Not that she noticed or anything.

  “Great,” he said with another of those dangerous smiles. “Louie and I will just hang out here while we wait.”

  She hurried to the kitchen and picked up the retractable leash she had bought the night before then returned to her living room.

  After she clipped it on, she handed it to Gabe and he walked into the August evening and began heading down the trail beside the road that wound its way along the cliffs, in the opposite direction from Casa Del Mar. The evening was lovely, warm and golden with summer’s seductive promise. This was her favorite time of day, about an hour before sunset when the colors were soft and glorious and the air smelled of the sea and sage and pine.

  “I’m not sure how far he will be able to go,” she warned. “He sleeps a lot and still seems pretty weak from his ordeal.”

  “We have that in common, then. I feel the same way. We don’t have to go far.”

  Poor man. She could imagine how hard being temporarily sidelined must feel to someone who had led such an active, adventurous life.

  “How are you feeling, really?”

  He was silent for several more steps, then answered her with what she guessed was more honesty than he gave most people who asked.

  “Mostly fine. It hurts, but a little less every day. At this point I’m just frustrated at how weak I still feel. I don’t make a very good patient, apparently. Funny, the things you learn about yourself when you need medical treatment.”

  “This can’t be the first serious injury you’ve ever had. Not when your whole life has been based on risk.”

  “I suppose I’ve been lucky up to now. I broke my arm when I was a kid, but I don’t remember much about it. We were living in Africa in a little village. The healer for the tribe just washed it in sacred water and then used a couple of sticks for a splint. For a cast, they used leaves and rope.”

  His life and the experiences he’d had were completely beyond her comprehension. She would not have been able to survive that kind of chaos.

  Bad enough that Jewel moved her and Beatriz from hotel to hotel, trailer park to crappy apartment, to homeless shelter. At least they had always had running water, electricity and access to Western medicine—as far as she could remember, anyway.

  “You look shocked,” he observed.

  “A little,” she admitted. “It probably seemed perfectly normal to you. Growing up in such unique circumstances, I mean.”

  “I wouldn’t say normal. And unique is one way of putting it. Others would call it primitive or dangerous or crazy. They did call it that. My mother, for instance. But it was the life I knew, at least from about five or six.”

  “What about before that?” The question seemed intrusive, and she wanted to immediately call it back, but Gabe didn’t seem to mind.

  “The first five years were pretty normal, if that is the word you want to use. What most people would consider normal, anyway. We lived outside Wellington, New Zealand. My dad had a job working construction. My mum was a schoolteacher.”

  New Zealand! That must be his accent, though she didn’t think it was a full-on Kiwi, more
like an amalgamation of all the places he had lived as a child.

  “Like my aunt Stella. She teaches at the middle school.”

  “It’s a worthy profession.”

  “If you do it right.”

  “I’ve heard my mother was good at it—until she decided she wanted something different. She ended up leaving my dad and me for someone she met online.”

  Daisy frowned. “She left? That’s unusual, especially in a woman who must enjoy children or she wouldn’t have become a schoolteacher.”

  She wondered if she had spoken out of turn when his features hardened.

  “You would think so, right? But her new Italian boyfriend didn’t want children along—especially not a child from her first marriage to another man. Mum decided I was a small sacrifice she was willing to make in exchange for the lifestyle her new husband could provide.”

  He spoke the words without bitterness but she had to imagine it couldn’t be a painless memory. Poor lost little boy. She pictured him, five years old, big, haunted green eyes, trying to understand why his mother didn’t want him anymore.

  “I’m sorry that happened to you. It must have been terribly difficult.”

  Walking beside her with his slightly uneven gait, he shrugged. “I still had my father.”

  Oh, yes. Chet Ellison, who had bequeathed his rugged good looks and chiseled jaw to his son. “I used to watch your father’s adventure shows on Saturday afternoons,” she admitted. “How did he go from working construction to kayaking down the Amazon?”

  He gave a gruff laugh. “You could say being abandoned by my mum did a number on both of us. My father reacted by becoming more headstrong and reckless. He was never happy unless we were off on some new adventure and he never wanted to stay in one place for very long.”

  “We have that in common,” she said quietly. “My...my mother was much the same way.”

  “Your mother was a reckless adventurer?”

  This time she was the one who laughed. “In her own way, I suppose. Life was an adventure to Jewel. She was an artist, one of those daydreaming, head-in-the-clouds types who prefers to dwell in the abstract instead of in hard reality. It’s easier sometimes to focus on the brilliant masterpiece you’re creating in your head rather than the fact that there’s no food in the house for your daughters.”

  She hadn’t meant to say that last part. It sounded entirely too self-pitying. The reality had not been that bad, anyway. Certainly, there had been times they went hungry but she had usually been able to scrounge something for her and Bea at least. She had only had to resort to panhandling a few times to feed her sister.

  She didn’t like thinking about that time in her life. She still woke up sometimes from nightmares where she was digging in garbage cans to find food.

  Things had never been that bleak for them. She had never actually scrounged through trash for food, but to a child trying to take care of her younger sister, that desperation had felt very real.

  “This is a beautiful view here,” he said, pausing when they reached a spot where someone had placed a bench between two giant pines that framed the ocean beyond. “I don’t think I would ever get tired of it.”

  “It is spectacular, isn’t it? Why don’t we sit and give you and Louie a rest?”

  He accepted her suggestion with an alacrity that told her more than she suspected he ever would about how he was really feeling.

  They sat together while the wind moaned in the pines and a songbird trilled from a branch overhead. She looked out to sea. Soon the gray whales would be heading back down to Mexico for the winter. It was a little early in the year to see whale spouts but she never stopped looking.

  “So. Tell me how you became Marguerite.”

  She jolted, taken completely by surprise. She should have known their quiet moment of peace wouldn’t last.

  “This again? I told you. I’m only her business manager.” The words sounded feeble and ineffectual, even to her. Gabe was obviously not convinced, either.

  “Here’s the thing. I don’t believe you. You can feed me that business manager line until you’re blue in the face but I still won’t bite. I know you’re Marguerite, Daisy. You don’t have to continue denying it.”

  “You don’t know anything,” she snapped, then wanted to groan. Good grief. She sounded like she was eight years old, lashing out at a bully on the playground.

  He didn’t seem offended. “There are plenty of people who would agree with you on that point. But while there are many things I don’t know, I’m right about this, aren’t I? In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever been more sure of anything in my life.”

  She didn’t know what to say. She wanted to argue but was afraid that would make her sound even more ridiculous.

  “I wasn’t thinking straight after pushing myself a little too hard while rescuing this guy here,” he said, pointing to Louie. “I was in more pain than I wanted to admit, otherwise I wouldn’t have believed your protests for a minute. But in retrospect, as I’ve gone over our interaction in my head, I remembered a few things. You had paint under your fingernails, Daisy. Paint that just happens to be the exact shade of turquoise that Marguerite is known for using often. Why would a business manager have colored paint under her fingernails?”

  “I told you, I was cleaning up old paint cans.”

  “I don’t believe you. That’s another thing. Daisy. Marguerite. They mean the same thing.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He shrugged. “When you’ve spent most of your life wandering the globe, you pick up a few things here and there, especially the meaning of words and names. When we lived in Tahiti, I learned French and had a friend named Marguerite. My dad used to call her Daisy.”

  She gazed out at the ocean, wondering how she could continue the deception. The secret felt so huge, suddenly. She had carried it by herself for so very long. She wanted desperately to tell someone.

  The little dog sniffed around a clump of grass and seagulls flew overhead. The moment seemed fraught with significance. No one knew the truth. Why should she tell this man she had only met a few days ago? He had the potential to ruin everything for her.

  Somehow, she trusted him. It didn’t make sense on any logical level but she did. He had risked his life to save a stranger, her brother-in-law, and risked it again to save a stranded little dog.

  Something told her Gabe Ellison was the sort of man she could count on.

  She faced him, locking her gaze to his. “You have to swear you won’t tell anyone. If word got out, it would ruin everything.”

  For just an instant shock flared in his gaze, as if he had never really expected her to tell him the truth. He masked it quickly. “I won’t say a word. Why would I? So it’s true.”

  “Yes. Ridiculous, isn’t it? The most mysterious artist around these days has a secret identity as a boring accountant in a quiet Northern California beach town.”

  “I wouldn’t say ridiculous. Fascinating is the word that comes to mind. Why the big veil of secrecy?”

  How did she answer that without going into the entire story? She couldn’t, she realized. It wasn’t enough to tell him she was Marguerite. She had to tell him all of it.

  “You have to understand, I never wanted to be an artist. That’s why I became a CPA. To me, that world of my childhood represented chaos and uncertainty and I...I hate chaos and uncertainty. I need structure and stability. Order. That’s why I love numbers. And, yes, I’m fully aware I probably need therapy.”

  He smiled a little. “Sounds to me like you understand yourself very well.”

  She fought the urge to smile back, drawn to this man more than she had been to anyone, ever. That scared her far more than telling him about Marguerite.

  “I am not the kind of person who is comfortable jumping into the unknown. I always like to know what’s going to happen next in m
y world. I map out driving routes in my head ahead of time to figure out the fastest way. I make a detailed shopping list before I go to the store. I write out my short-term and long-term goals and have a well-structured plan to achieve them.”

  “Is there something wrong with that?”

  She had always felt there was. Stella and Bea were far more spontaneous. They could shift direction on a whim and things seemed to turn out fine. Surprises always left her feeling vaguely queasy.

  “I never wanted to be an artist,” she repeated. “Don’t get me wrong, I love art and have great appreciation for those like my sister who can create something out of nothing but their own imagination and skill, but I never wanted to be among their ranks.”

  “Yet here you are, one of the most famous artists working today.”

  “I don’t know how things came to this point. When I think about it, I still shake my head and I’m not sure whether to laugh or to cry.”

  “How did it start?”

  He really did seem interested. She told herself it was only because he had a career as a filmmaker, used to finding out people’s stories.

  She had told him more than anyone else knew. Why not tell him everything?

  “My husband was ill the last few years of his life. Longer, actually. Cancer. He was...terminal when I married him.”

  He looked as shocked as Stella had when Daisy, only twenty-five years old, had told her she was marrying a man more than twice her age who was dying of cancer.

  “You must have loved him very much.”

  “I did,” she said softly. She didn’t add that their marriage hadn’t been a traditional one. James had been her best friend, her mentor, the closest thing she’d ever had to a father figure. Not ever her husband in the true sense of the word.

  Gabe didn’t need to know those intimate details of her life.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  Tears welled up in her throat at the sympathy in his voice. Most people, even some here in Cape Sanctuary, thought she had married James because he was a well-respected writer with money and recognition. She hadn’t cared about any of that. He had been her friend, someone who truly saw her.