Through Eyes of Love

by Pamela Browning

  "I should go in anyway," John said, draping an arm around her shoulders. "I'm expecting a phone call."

  "Another one?"

  "Yes, another one," he said, thinking that maybe she would ask him about all the phone calls, and there had been a lot of them in the past few days. Sometimes he answered, closeting himself in his den. Other times he turned off his cell phone and returned the calls later. Cassie wasn't the prying kind; she was such a private person that she seldom inquired into anyone else's business. Still, he wished she were more inquisitive. A question from her would have given him the lead-in to initiate the discussion he intended to have with her. She was ready now. All he needed was an opening.

  "Shall I cook for us tonight?" Cassie asked. She was entranced with his kitchen, and after he'd shown her how the pasta maker worked, she'd begun making pasta with a vengeance.

  "We could go out," he suggested. After having spent so long on Flat Top Mountain, he enjoyed seeing Cassie dressed up, watching other men's heads swing to stare after her when she walked into a restaurant.

  "We have marinated steak in the refrigerator. I'd almost forgotten about it."

  "Right. We were going to grill shish kebabs."

  He held the door for her, and at that moment the phone rang.

  She slid under his arm to go inside. "That means I get first dibs on the shower," she said, smiling up at him.

  The phone call was from one of his managers at AirBridges, and it was brief. When John hung up, he pondered the situation with Cassie. How was he going to break it to her that he wasn't who he said he was? And all the rest of it—the cornea transplants, his search for her, everything. It was a lot to heap on her at one time. Maybe he'd bring up the subject tonight at dinner. He wanted nothing more than to conclude this charade.

  Cassie emerged from the bathroom, a towel tucked neatly at the cleft of her breasts. With her hair wet and molded to her head, her eyes took on a new importance in her face. Beautiful and radiant, they smiled at him even before her lips. He bent his head to kiss her lingeringly.

  "Your turn at the shower," she told him. She sat on the edge of the bed and began to towel her hair.

  As he was about to disappear into the bathroom, she called out, "John? Shouldn't you check online about rescheduling our airline reservations?"

  He'd talked Cassie into postponing their trip back to North Carolina until the following Wednesday. No amount of sweet-talking had persuaded her to put off their return for another whole week, however.

  "I've shut down my computer, but why not phone? No point in waiting until there are no seats left." He headed for the bathroom. "There's a travel agent's card in my wallet. Let him take care of it."

  Quickly he stepped into the shower. When he was finished, he walked with the towel around his waist into the bedroom. He was fantasizing about making love to Cassie before dinner. She was everything a man could want in a woman, and he could never get enough of her.

  All thoughts of lovemaking faded as he observed Cassie sitting on the bed, her face expressionless. He sensed immediately that something had gone wrong. Totally, terribly wrong.

  "You!" she said in a choked voice. His wallet slid from her lap to the ground, and with a whopping jolt, he understood. His driver's license had fallen to the floor, its incriminating photo face-up. And there was other identification, too. A social security card. But no, it was all wrong! He hadn't meant for her to find out this way!

  Cassie's chest heaved so hard that her towel loosened to reveal the white swimsuit line and more, but John was immune to the sight of what would have stimulated him only moments ago.

  He strode across the room as Cassie's eyes lifted to his, and now her eyes were not silver-bright but gray and flat, the color of lead. He wanted to reach out and touch her, to smooth the pain and doubt from her face. He wanted to kiss away the accusing expression that seemed so foreign on the beautifully asymmetric face of Cassie, his love.

  But he dared not touch her.

  She spat out the words.

  "Your name isn't John Howard! Your name is John Bridges! Isn't it?"

  Slowly, numbly, he nodded. He had wanted to tell her for so long.

  "Cassie—"

  "I don't even know you! Keep away from me!" In a fury she rolled out of his reach, the towel unwinding and falling to the carpet. John's king-sized bed lay between them, and they faced each other over its expanse.

  Cassie had bared her soul to this man, and she'd thought she knew him. She'd placed all her love and trust in John Howard only to find out that there was no such person.

  In a flash it hit her: What else did she know about him? In their dreamlike existence on the mountain, their lives and their love had seemed magical. But now she saw what a fool she'd been.

  If he wasn't who he said he was, then perhaps he wasn't what she thought he was. A photographer? What did she know of that? Where were his pictures? Certainly there were none in this magnificent house with its ocean and its fabulous kitchen and its fashionable Jacuzzis.

  "Who are you?"

  John had not known that Cassie's gentle soprano could grate so harshly on his ears. He winced, but she didn't allow time to reply.

  "Who are you?" she repeated. "Some hustler who wants me to come back to L.A.? Who do you work for? Kajurian? A recording company? Who sent you to Flat Top Mountain?" Suddenly she realized what she had been too stupid or too wrapped up in herself to realize before—that John, the quintessential Californian, the sophisticated and worldly John who was so at home in L.A. and here at this house in Malibu, would not have come to so remote and bucolic a place as Scot's Cove without a purpose. What a fool she was to have been taken in by him!

  "Morgana gave me your address," he said as calmly as he could. "But Cassie, don't—"

  "So Morgana was in on it! My friend, who just happens to need publicity for 'All the Way Home'. And who else? Kajurian?"

  It horrified John that she would think he'd use her, but in the world she'd left behind, that sort of using was commonplace. He drew a deep breath. He'd make her understand.

  "Kajurian had nothing to do with it. It's not what you think. I've wanted to tell you all about it for so long, but you weren't ready to hear it. Whatever I've done, I've done out of love and gratitude. Please, Cassie, you must believe me." His eyes pleaded with her for understanding.

  "I've been hustled and hassled," Cassie said, her anger subsiding suddenly, leaving her feeling deflated. "By people who want to use me for their own purposes. I had Kevin to protect me... once." She spoke brokenly, and the fire went out of her. She stood before him exposed in all her vulnerability, and he loved her with all his heart. But she was a stranger.

  Like a person sleepwalking, she went to the closet and pulled a big white cotton shirt on over her damp hair. Wearily she tugged on a pair of baggy beach pants and tied the drawstring waist.

  "Where are you going?" he asked, dreading the answer.

  "Back to Flat Top Mountain," she said. "I never should have left." She slipped her feet into a pair of sandals and moved heavily to the phone, where she called Information for the number of a cab company. She punched in the number and asked that a cab be sent immediately.

  Swearing, John went to his own closet and began to throw on clothes.

  "I'm going to get Morgana over here," he said forcefully. "She'll help me explain."

  "Morgana? I don't want to see her." She tossed clothes into a suitcase. She looked small and defenseless, but there was something tough about her, too. It hadn't been there when he'd first seen her sitting under that tree on top of the mountain.

  John grabbed his cell phone and speed-dialed Morgana. After several rings, he reached Morgana's voice mail. A lot of help that was.

  "Cassie, listen to me," he said, tossing the cell away in exasperation and following her as she gathered her few cosmetics from the bathroom. She was eerily calm.

  "My name is John Howard Bridges, Cassie. I'm not a photographer. I wish I'd never started that busi
ness; it gave me nothing but trouble. The fiction that I was a nature photographer made it seem logical that I'd be living on Flat Top Mountain, and I had to see you, to tell you—"

  "Don't talk to me," said Cassie, whipping her head around so that he'd be out of her line of vision. Water droplets from her hair stung his cheek. "Just don't talk."

  "I'm the one who wrote you all those letters a couple of years ago," he said in desperation. "You returned some of them. You refused to see me. Remember? I signed my name John H. Bridges. I was sure that if I told you my real name when I got to Flat Top Mountain, you'd turn me away."

  "You're right," she said. She looked him straight in the eye. "You have to be careful when you're in the public eye. You meet a lot of nuts." She slammed the lid of her suitcase.

  "Wait! You can't just walk out of here like this!"

  "Watch me!"

  "Cassandra, I—"

  "Don't call me that! You said you'd call me by that name when what you said was important and real and true and meant only for me! Is anything you said real and true, John?" She lifted her suitcase off the bed and glared at him.

  "That's too heavy for you," he objected, but she tightened her lips as well as her grip on the suitcase and marched down the hall, where she unlocked the front door. The cab arrived with perfect timing. John cursed the driver, the cab company and taxicabs in general.

  "Need some help?" called the driver from his open window, but Cassie was already heaving the suitcase into the back seat and climbing in after it. She didn't look back as the cab sped away.

  John couldn't believe it; it had happened so fast. It was as though she had become a completely different person as soon as she learned the truth.

  What had he done? Cassie was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and because he had handled the situation so sloppily, he'd blown it. He couldn't believe that a mission he'd begun out of gratitude and with highly honorable intentions had turned so sour.

  The front door slammed behind him with a definite and final thud, and he stood for a moment on the tiled floor of the foyer, not knowing what to do next.

  Give her time, said a voice inside him. Bleakly John saw that there was no reasoning with Cassie. Nothing he could say would soften what, in her mind, had been the ultimate deception.

  He'd give her time, but what was he to do in the meantime? He who delighted in her gentle presence and her tinkling laughter, who found the way she moved and the way she looked unbelievably titillating—how was he to live without her? Oh, Cassie, he thought in despair. Why wouldn't you listen?

  He walked aimlessly into the living room, its curtains drawn back to reveal the ocean. On the horizon, the sun slipped slowly down, washing the waves with gold. Sunset here at Malibu had always been one of their closest times. He never forgot, not for one minute, that he wouldn't be seeing sunsets if it hadn't been for the corneas he had acquired from Kevin.

  Why wasn't I honest with her from the beginning?

  Blindly he sank down on the couch, buried his face in his hands, and let the first hot tears of grief trickle slowly through his fingers.

  * * *

  "Where to, lady?"

  "What?"

  "I said, where do you want to go?"

  "LAX," she said, but suddenly she knew she didn't want to go to the airport. Not because she was afraid. She'd left her phobia behind forever, she hoped. But she needed time to regroup, to think. She wanted to return to the place where she had known so much love and happiness and the security of a warm family life. She wanted to be where she could feel, if only for a few days, close to Kevin and Rory.

  "Would you drive me to my house near Palm Springs?"

  The cab driver slowed the cab and shot her an incredulous glance in the rearview mirror. He saw a small woman with beautiful eyes and damp brown hair, her chin set in an expression he knew enough not to question. This was clearly a woman who knew her own mind, and she wasn't one of those crazy ones, spaced out on drugs or booze.

  "It'd be an expensive ride," he said, dubiously.

  "I'll pay." She named a more than adequate sum, one that made his eyes pop. With that amount of money he could take the rest of the week off. He could take the rest of the month off.

  "Sure," he said, as though this sort of thing happened every day.

  Cassie settled back for the long drive. Malibu whipped past in a blur, and she wondered again how she could have been tricked and for what purpose.

  Who was John Howard? Some out-of-work third-rate actor who could have been bought to bring her back to L.A., to talk her into performing again, to get the Cassandra Dare money-making machine going? Before the accident she and Kevin had employed many people—personal assistants, hairdressers, makeup artists, a public relations guru. Any or all of them could be responsible, along with Morgana or Kajurian, for trying to bring her back on track.

  Kevin, Kevin, she thought, I wish you were here to take care of me.

  She hated John Howard, hated him!

  For the man she had known as John Howard had changed her past, and he had failed her in the present. Cassie could see no hope at all for her future.

  * * *

  When she arrived at Wildflower, it was during a rare rainstorm. The cab driver carried her single suitcase in through the wide front doors and stood dripping on the marble floor while she counted bills into his hand. The man was clearly impressed by the foyer's Swarovski crystal chandelier, the majestic spiral staircase and obvious trappings of wealth. He narrowed his eyes at Cassie as he closed his fingers around the money.

  "You look like somebody," he said.

  Cassie managed a smile. He'd been kind. "I'm Cassandra Dare," she said.

  "You? You're Cassandra Dare?"

  "Yes."

  "I should have guessed. Cassandra Dare!" A shadow passed over his face. "Well, I'll be going." He nodded uncertainly. "Are you sure you'll be all right here?"

  "I'll be fine. Thank you."

  After a dubious nod, he ran through the rain to his cab, and Cassie watched its headlights swing across the gates before they automatically closed.

  She walked quickly through the house, switching on lights until the whole first floor was lit up as though there were a party going on. The rooms seemed so much bigger than she remembered them, probably because she was used to living in Gran's little house now. She must still be numb from her discovery about John, because she did not feel as she had expected to feel upon her return here.

  The house was special to her, named after "Wildflower," her first hit single. She and Kevin had been newlyweds then, and this house was the embodiment of their hopes for the future.

  There was the old walking stick, crafted from a section of gnarled tree root, that Kevin had often carried when they hiked in the desert. It was standing at its usual place beside one of the French doors leading to the pool. At Cassie's orders, nothing in the house had been changed since the day of the accident. She picked up the walking stick but could no longer picture Kevin carrying it. She couldn't even picture Kevin.

  Cassie went slowly up the stairs to her bedroom, hers and Kevin's, and lifted a small framed picture of him from a round skirted table on her side of the bed. Yes, he had looked just this way in their first year of marriage. Absently she set the picture in place and looked around at the pretty French furniture, the antique Chinese screen that hung above the bed, the windows with their silk draperies that could be pulled back for a spectacular view.

  She wandered into Rory's room, decorated in bold blue and white, its mural of sailboats covering one wall. His clothes hung in the closet, and she touched the sleeve of his parka with the fur-lined hood, momentarily burying her face in the fur, wanting to smell the sweet little-boy smell of him again. But no, people's fragrances must fade along with their memories, because she couldn't smell Rory there. She closed the closet door and made a furrow with her finger in the dust on Rory's dresser.

  She was wet from the rain, and she should change her clothes. Her leg
ached. But she was overcome with a deadening lassitude. She didn't have the energy to do anything about her damp clothes.

  Back in her bedroom, she sat on the edge of the bed she'd shared with Kevin. It seemed like such a long time ago. Yet they had loved each other so much, and it seemed as though she ought to be able to recapture Kevin in some small way here at Wildflower, sitting on the bed they had shared.

  When she had fallen in love with John, Cassie had learned that you never love the same way twice. Everything with John had been fresh and new and different, and she had grown to depend on him. She'd learned John's face, his quirks, and had learned how to respond to John and live with John until John was all she knew.

  Or thought she knew.

  She crumpled into a heap on the bed and let the sobs rack her body, echoing through the big empty house. She cried until her throat ached from the effort. Finally the tears ran silently from her eyes, sad seepage of her broken heart.

  Chapter 15

  From the cockpit John watched the toylike shadow of his plane scudding swiftly across the landscape below. Morgana had advised him to look for the distinctive swimming pool in the shape of a diamond. He spotted it glimmering aqua blue behind the L-shaped house. This was Wildflower, where Cassie almost certainly must be.

  He'd been frantic, trying to find her after she left him. He wanted to make sure she was all right. She'd looked so broken, so hurt. He needed to know that she wasn't planning on doing anything rash.

  "Sure, John, I can check Flat Top," Ned Church assured him when John phoned the day after Cassie fled Malibu. "But I ain't heard she came back. I hear nearly all the local news, what with owning the only gas station in town and the store, too. Yeah, I'll drive up there right away. You say Bonnie Ott is looking after the garden? And the cat? Well, I'll talk with Bonnie, then. She'd know."

  When it came, Ned's return call was less than encouraging.

  "Nah, she ain't there. She ain't been there, either. It's deader'n a doornail up at Cassie's place. Bonnie Ott says she ain't heard nothing."