by GA McKevett
“This is the lightkeeper’s cottage,” Betty Sue told them. “It was built at the same time as the lighthouse itself, back in 1853.”
“Wow, pre–Civil War,” Savannah said as Betty Sue took the keys from her hand.
“Yes. President Franklin Pierce ordered it built after a notorious shipwreck on the reefs over there.” She pointed toward the water to a row of jagged rock teeth, some of which jutted above the surface, while others, looking just as sharp and ominous, lurked below.
“Wouldn’t wanna run aground on those things,” Dirk said. “They’d grind you up and spit you out—turn you into shark bait.”
“That’s pretty much what happened to the crew and passengers of the Lillyan Suzanne.” Betty Sue stepped to the door of the cottage and fit the smallest key into the lock. “She was a steamer, transporting a bunch of guys from San Francisco to Panama. They’d just struck it rich in the gold rush up there and were carrying their fortunes with them. The ship hit the reefs, and it was every man for himself. In the melee, they were more interested in stealing each other’s gold dust than rescuing the survivors.”
“Tough group,” Dirk replied. “Reminds me of our police department barbecues when the supply of ribs runs low.”
Betty Sue turned the key and opened the cottage’s door. It creaked loudly on its hinges, and Savannah thought, What else would you expect from a door opened with a skeleton key?
“If you choose to accept your friends’ generous gift,” the shopkeeper said, “this is where you’ll spend the remainder of your honeymoon. I have to say, I envy you. It’s as romantic a setting as you’ll find anywhere.”
Chapter 2
Betty Sue threw the door of the lightkeeper’s cottage wide open and waved them inside with a flourish.
Savannah stepped over the threshold and back in time. The furnishings were Victorian and nautical in flavor. A sofa covered in burgundy velvet, with a diamond-tufted back, carved wood trim, and claw-feet, dominated the far wall. In front of the sofa, a massive marine chest—its top covered by a sheet of cobalt blue mirror—served as a coffee table.
The walls were hung with gilt-framed paintings of clipper ships in full sail, battling their way through tempest-tossed seas. In other renderings, warships fired upon each other amid billows of dark smoke and bright flame.
In the center of the ceiling hung a chandelier made of a giant ship’s wheel, studded with hurricane-glass chimneys, while brass lanterns warmed the corners of the room with soft golden light.
Above the stone fireplace, on a heavy wooden mantel, sat a model ship, imprisoned in a giant glass bottle. Antique leather books and a brass sextant graced the opposite ends of the mantel.
Savannah stood there, absorbing it all—the romance of a bygone era.
As a little girl, marooned on a patch of flat Georgia farmland, she had often dreamed of the sea, fantasizing about how it would be to ride the waves in one of those magnificent ships, to feel the wild wind in her hair and the spray of the salty sea on her face.
Standing in that room with its art and furnishings that hadn’t changed in over 150 years, she imagined herself wearing a gown of lavender silk taffeta and Dirk, in his sailor’s garb, as she kissed him good-bye. He was leaving to go away to sea. Heaven only knew if she would ever, in this lifetime, lay eyes on his precious face again and—
“Is there a shower in this place?” he barked at Betty Sue. “’Cause I can’t stand taking baths. A lot of these old places don’t have showers. If it ain’t got a shower, I ain’t stayin’.”
Savannah revised her fantasy slightly to include her lifting her dainty black boot, with its row of teeny-tiny buttons and intricate lacings, and giving him a loving little kick on the tush as he turned to leave her.
Betty Sue cleared her throat and shuffled her feet. “Um . . . well, actually, it doesn’t have a shower. But it has a huge, beautiful claw-foot tub that’s big enough for two. Most romantic and—”
“Romantic, she-mantic. I ain’t spending money on a place to stay that don’t even have a shower.”
Betty Sue’s friendly demeanor evaporated. Her smile slipped from her face.
Savannah had noticed that happening a lot in Dirk’s presence. Smiles slipping, pleasantries vanishing, jollies going ka-poof. It was a predictable effect he seemed to have on those around him.
She stepped forward, laced her arm through his, and gave it a squeeze that was a wee bit harder than her usual affectionate hug. “May I remind you,” she said in a low voice, “that you aren’t spending a dime on this. It’s a gift from Ryan and John.”
He scowled down at her, but he didn’t reply.
“You can spend your honeymoon standing in the shower back there at the Fleabag No-Tell Motel, if you want,” she continued, “but your bride is going to stay right here, taking full advantage of this amazing present. Suit yourself, darlin’.”
“Ain’t gonna be much of a honeymoon without my wife.”
Savannah smiled up at him sweetly, making full use of her dimples and batting her eyelashes for added emphasis. “That was my thought exactly.” She leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek. “You sit in one end of that big ol’ tub, I’ll sit in the other, and I’ll dump a bowl of water over your head. How’ll that be?”
He mumbled something under his breath, which wasn’t quite audible; for that, she was grateful.
Betty Sue appeared to sense that the battle of the sexes was over—at least for the moment—and her smile reappeared. “The master bedroom and bath are upstairs,” she said. “I think you’ll find them quite comfortable.”
She walked back to the door and motioned them to follow. “Now I want to show you the best part of your present. You don’t just get to sleep in the lightkeeper’s cottage. You get free run of the lighthouse itself!”
As Betty Sue led them to the light tower, Savannah could hardly contain her excitement. She had been a fan of lighthouses since she was a child and had first seen a picture of the Cape Hatteras Light on the wall of her hometown library: the grace and beauty of the gleaming towers themselves, the rich history filled with the drama of shipwrecks, pirates, and moon cursers, not to mention the folklore of courageous lightkeepers who rescued drowning, sea-tossed victims. Ah, the thrill of it all.
For her, simply to be able to enter one was a dream in itself. To think she would have one all to herself—well, plus Dirk—was more glory than she could take in.
“Like other lights all over the country,” Betty Sue was saying, “this one is now fully automated. So you don’t have to do anything but pretend to be lightkeepers.”
“No whale oil lamps to clean?” Dirk asked as he trudged along behind the women.
“No,” Betty Sue replied dryly. “But if one of those cruise ships runs aground, you’ll be expected to swim out there among the reefs and pull victims to shore.” She gave him a quick glance over her shoulder and a smug little smirk.
He grunted. “No problem. I was a lifeguard back in the eighties.”
Savannah dropped back to take his hand. “Wrestled sharks, too,” she said, grinning up at him.
“I’d throw a ring buoy around ’em, and tow ’em to shore with the throw rope between my teeth.”
Savannah reached down and pinched his butt. “Manly man o’ mine.”
“Don’t you forget it.”
Betty Sue glanced back at them and rolled her eyes. “Pleeez. I’m almost finished with this tour, and then I’m outta here and you two can be as saccharine sweet as you want.”
Savannah nudged Dirk and whispered in his ear, “I’m more interested in locking loins at the top of that light. Won’t that be a hoot?”
He looked pretty much hoot-free as he leaned his head back, looked up at the top of the light, and scowled. “You mean you intend to climb up there?”
“Of course I do! Are you kidding? We get to go up in a lighthouse! Do you know how many people would kill for a chance like . . . ? Oh . . .”
She’d forgotten.
>
Dirk wasn’t afraid of bank robbers, purse snatchers, or disorderly drunks. He’d sneer in the face of a rabid, foaming-at-the-toothsome-mouth junkyard dog. But he had two fears that were so irrational and consuming that they could be fully classified as “phobias.”
For some reason, unless they were in pieces, laid out on Savannah’s backyard grill, and slathered in barbecue sauce, Dirk hated chickens.
He also loathed heights. And he considered anything above the second rung of a stepladder to be “high.”
Savannah had a lightbulb moment concerning her new groom and their new honeymoon locale. Maybe a lighthouse wasn’t the best choice for Dirk.
“You gonna be okay, sugar?” she asked him, squeezing his hand.
He gulped. “I don’t know.”
As Betty Sue unlocked the giant door of the tower with the largest key on the ring, she gave Dirk a sarcastic little smirk and said, “What’s the matter, Manly Man? Scared o’ heights, are we?”
Savannah held her breath. If Betty Sue had been a guy, Dirk might have done something spectacularly wrong and deeply embarrassing . . . like challenge her to arm wrestle there on the spot.
But, fortunately, when it came to those of the female gender—even those wearing past-its-prime fisherman attire—Dirk was as gallant as any gentleman born and bred south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
“Stand aside and let me in there,” he said as he pushed past both Savannah and Betty Sue and rushed toward the door of the lighthouse.
As he passed Savannah, she could hear him muttering something under his breath about “. . . show her . . . battle-axe . . . overalls . . .”
Okay, she thought. Minus two points on that “Gallantry Checklist.”
As she followed him, passing Betty Sue, the woman placed the keys in her hand. “It’s all yours now,” she said. “Have fun and”—the shopkeeper glanced at Dirk’s retreating back and gave Savannah a somewhat sympathetic smile—“well, good luck.”
Something that felt a lot like righteous indignation swelled inside Savannah. A moment later, she heard herself saying, “He has his quirks. He’s cantankerous enough to make a preacher cuss. Some days he could start an argument with a fence post. But I can tell you, under all that contrariness, he’s a good man, with a heart of gold—if he likes you, and you don’t get between him and his supper dish.”
Betty Sue chuckled. “Funny. That’s almost word for word what your friend Ryan said about him. Except for the cursing preacher and the supper dish part.” As she turned to walk away, she gave Savannah a grin and a wink and added, “So, if he’s good in the sack, you might wanna keep him.”
Savannah flashed back on the intimacies of the night before—when a man known far and wide for his impatience, gruffness, and roughness had been nothing but patient, loving, and infinitely tender.
“Oh yeah,” she whispered to the retreating Betty Sue, who was making her way through the fields of wildflowers and prickly pear cacti back to her gift shop. “He’s a keeper.”
“Hey, are you comin’?” she heard him bellow from inside the light. “I ain’t interested in doing this all by myself, you know!”
She sighed. And followed him inside.
Savannah entered the semidarkness of the lighthouse tower and felt a thrill as she gazed at the winding staircase that spiraled gracefully upward. At the top, the stairs disappeared into a small, round hole, the access to the lantern room itself.
Dirk was nearly there. For a guy who seldom exerted himself without good reason, he wasn’t wasting any time getting the job done. Savannah chuckled to herself. Whether it was eating some limp green vegetable off his plate, tackling a drunk, unbathed homeless guy, or performing the ten-year oil change in his ancient Buick, if Dirk had an unpleasant task to do, he was big on getting it over-and-done-with as soon as possible.
She knew that the instant he got to the top of the light, proving he could do it, he would descend even faster than he had ascended. She was determined, though, not to let it happen.
Fulfilling a lifelong dream shouldn’t be rushed. And it should be performed with your newly avowed spouse by your side. At least that was her intention, if she could get up the staircase fast enough and block his downward escape.
When he disappeared into the hole at the top, she expected him to pop right back down. But he didn’t. And although it took her a long time and a lot of huffing-and-puffing climbing to get to the top, he was still in the lantern room when she finally popped her head above the floor and looked inside.
He was staring at the center of the round room, where something that looked like a cross between a glistening, modernistic sculpture and a glass beehive stood.
“Check this out!” he said. “Cool, huh? I think this thing makes the light.”
“It’s called a Fresnel lens,” she told him, eager to share her lighthouse groupie expertise, “invented by a French guy named Fresnel.”
She stepped up onto the lantern room’s floor and joined him beside the strange but beautiful configuration of glass prisms. Dominating the center of the room, the structure stood about three feet high and was mounted in a polished brass frame. “There’s a hurricane lamp inside there,” she said. “Or at least there used to be before they replaced them with electric bulbs. All those pieces of glass, situated just so, concentrate the light into a beam that’ll reach miles and miles across the water. Awesome, huh?”
She leaned down, peering into the center of the lens, trying to see the bulb.
She was so intent that she didn’t realize Dirk had left her, until she heard the door that led outside close with a resounding thud.
Through the windows, she saw that he had walked out onto the gallery, the exterior catwalk that surrounded the lantern room.
Must’ve gotten over his fear of heights, she told herself as she followed him outside to enjoy the view.
But by the time she stepped through the door, he had already made his way around to the other side of the light. All thoughts of her new groom vanished as she took in the magnificent sight below her.
From this amazing vantage point, the island in all its splendor lay at her feet. She could see from one end to the other—the forested areas, covered in thick, tropical foliage; the more arid regions, with their sparse vegetation sprouting from sand and rocks. And circling the edge of the isle, the stony cliffs soaring above the shimmering beaches and cerulean waters.
She took a mental snapshot to add to the photo book she had been collecting all her life—an album of memories, tucked deep inside her heart, which contained some of the most precious moments she had experienced. The majority of those carefully assembled memories revolved around family and friends. But some, like this one, simply celebrated a moment shared between her and her surroundings, the beauty of nature, and a sense of oneness with it.
The moment was fleeting at best.
Life had a way of interrupting the flow of even the most blissful spiritual connections.
Far below the lighthouse, where a particularly steep cliff met the beach, she saw a flash of blue in a copse of tall shrubs with bright yellow flowers, then another, as something darted among the dense greenery.
Instinctively, she knew something was wrong and watched closely as a figure emerged, just long enough for her to see that it was a woman. A blond woman wearing a pale blue business suit. A woman who didn’t look like she was going for a morning jog.
She looked like she was running for her life.
“Dirk!” Savannah called. “Get over here. Look at this.”
She shielded her eyes with her hand as she squinted into the morning sunlight, trying to determine what, or who, might be chasing the blonde. But she saw nothing, not even a rustling in the bushes.
For a moment, the woman stopped and poked her head out of the greenery, looking behind her. Then she left her hiding place and raced on down the beach, away from the lighthouse.
Savannah watched until she disappeared behind a large outcropping of rock and cliff, f
arther down the shore.
“Dirk!” she called again, and turned to see him walking up behind her.
“What are you yellin’ about?” he said. “Sheez. Wanna holler it again? There might be some goat on a mountain in Tibet that didn’t hear you.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have dawdled. You missed it.”
“Missed what?”
Savannah turned and continued to scan the coastline for any sign of the woman’s pursuer. “Seeing a gal hightail it down the beach. She was running like her tail feathers were on fire.”
Savannah turned and headed for the door. “Let’s get down there. See if we can find out what’s goin’ on.”
“No,” he said, blocking her path.
“No? What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I mean, this is our honeymoon, and we’re not getting involved in anybody else’s business. Especially if it’s business that involves running or feathers on fire.”
“But—”
“No ‘but’s.’ We made a deal that we wouldn’t go looking for trouble of any kind, shape, or form while we were here. We had more than our share of drama just trying to get married. I intend to enjoy this honeymoon.”
He stepped closer, looking down at her with so much love—not to mention a lusty twinkle in his eye—that she could hardly resist.
Then she thought of how hard that blonde had been running on the beach, dressed in her fine business suit. For a moment, Savannah’s curiosity warred with her desire to stay on her new husband’s good side.
After twenty-four hours, she was all too aware of how nice his good side could be.
But of all Savannah’s virtues and vices, the character trait that had always been first and foremost in her psyche was curiosity. Pure and simple.
And this time, it won out over lust. It triumphed over her soul-deep need for a peaceful vacation from their recent travails. Even her deeply engrained Southern teachings about pleasing the people around you at all personal costs crumbled in the face of pure, unadulterated nosiness.
