by Mary Brady
Addy examined the box. Roses, hand carved with care covered the lid. There was no label adhered to the surface. It could be a one of a kind, made for a beloved, she speculated.
Addy gently shook the wooden box again.
A clink and a small thud answered.
“Addy?”
She nearly leaped straight up in the air.
Zach looked troubled in the shadowed light.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“There’s at least five feet of water in the basement.”
“Oh, no. Were there any antiques down there?”
He shook his head.
“I’m so sorry.” She took a step forward. “I don’t know how much this will help ease the burden of your basement, but...”
She held out the box. She already knew she was no hard-nosed journalist when it came to Zachary Hale. This proved it without a doubt.
“What’s this?”
She pointed to the ceiling and he stepped in to look up at the damage.
“This,” she said, “came down with it.”
She pushed the box into his hands and he examined it carefully.
“We’re done here,” he said quietly and turned away.
Addy had expected more of a reaction from him. People continued to surprise her.
She scrambled after him and expected to follow him to the loft but on the first floor he detoured into one of the back rooms serving as the mansion’s library.
From one of the lower shelves he took a leather-covered volume. The careworn pages had sketches and photographs attached with handwritten explanations beneath them.
She held up her flashlight so he could better see the images.
He flipped back and forth among the pages until he came to a sketch of a box, a wooden box covered with carved roses.
“Oh, my goodness.”
Under the drawing several lines were written using a quill and ink.
Hand-carved box belonging to my beloved mother, Colleen Rose Fletcher McClure. She said a dear friend gave it to her, and I always speculated the box came from my father. Not Mr. McClure, but the man everyone but my mother denied had fathered me. The box, in which my mother kept a few of her secret treasures, disappeared sometime during my childhood. I credited one of the servants with thieving the box, but my mother asked me not to be so hard on people. How could I be else. It’s a harsh world when your grandfather hates your father and gives no quarter to a grandson who wants only to know what happened to his real father.
It was signed.
Rónán Uilliam McClure
They silently stared at the sketch of the box.
“Apparently, the pirate’s son was not fooled by the subterfuge. So we can speculate the box was hidden away by Colleen Rose? Can we open it?”
He grinned. “Down, Ms. Journalist.”
“I mean, how casually interesting a find. Should we go eat dinner, wash the dishes and go to bed?”
“I’m not averse to going to bed.”
“Very funny.”
“All right. I am hungry.”
“We aren’t going to open it at all, are we? You’re going to wait until the pirate’s descendants, Daniel MacCarey and Heather Loch, are there. No, you’ll give it to them because the box most likely has treasures from the pirate, their relative, not yours. How could I ever have thought you were a crook?”
He smiled ruefully and sadly and then kissed her on the mouth in forgiveness. “I don’t know, maybe because everyone else did, because your sister no doubt still believes I am.”
He carefully closed the book and put it back on the shelf. “I wasn’t kidding about being hungry.”
“Me, too. How about we go see what we can find to warm up over an open fire?”
“You gave up easily.”
“I’m not finished. I’m regrouping. There could be a story in that box. Maybe not an international sensation like you, but something of interest as least to the people of Bailey’s Cove.”
“The good folk of Bailey’s Cove will find out soon enough about the existence of the box and soon afterward the contents. Ms. Loch shares eagerly.”
* * *
THEY ATE THEIR fireplace-heated dinner at the coffee table in the envelope of warmth from the flames. The box sat on the dining-room table all by itself and unmolested.
When they were at the sink doing dishes, using bottled water pumped from the hand pump in the house, Addy turned to look at the box.
“We could just take a peek.”
“Or not.”
“The box is technically yours.”
“Only technically.”
“I could take a look inside and not tell you what I found.”
“I could read about it online. Reclusive Maine man finds love letters from long ago?”
“And you’re a romantic. I do love that facet of you, but be careful. You’re beginning to speak in taglines.”
“Where did your mind go first?”
Not to love letters, that was for sure. Did that make her unromantic? She parted her lips to speak and he captured her mouth with his. And when he was finished with his plundering told her, “The truth, not the corrected version.”
“Okay, a treasure map. I thought of a treasure map.”
“And what would you do with a treasure map if you found it?
“I would have given it to you, of course.” She tilted her chin up at him in challenge.
He coughed out an abrupt laugh.
“You don’t trust me.” She feigned insult.
“I was sure I didn’t trust you when I met you. That’s why I almost left you in your car in a ravine while I sought refuge from a hurricane in my nice, safe loft.”
“But you came back for me.” She dried the last plate and put it on the stack in the cupboard. “You yanked me out of my car and practically carried me away. I do owe you.”
“The storm is letting up,” he said as he wiped down the sink.
“That makes my heart hurt.”
When he smiled at her she could see the questions in his eyes and the pain. He had a world of hurt waiting for him. Even if he eventually proved he was not responsible for the financial collapse of Hale and Blankenstock, he’d have lost his friends and his business. Who would trust him, to have been so close and to not have seen what was going on?
She pushed the tip of her index finger gently into his chest. “I have an idea.”
“Some of your ideas are quite good.” He captured her finger and drew the tip into his mouth.
She snatched her finger back and curled her hand in to a protective fist around it.
“You’ll like this one.”
He followed her to the lower level to the shower room. She left a trail of clothing in her wake. With each ugly, unflattering item she left on the floor, the sexier she felt. By the time she reached the door to the bathroom, all she had on was one sock.
Once they were inside the warm room, she leaned against the closed door and held up the foot with the sock on it for him to remove. He obliged. Then he lifted her leg higher and kissed the bottom of her foot. Sexy, so sexy and it was just a kiss on her foot for heaven’s sake.
Her heart wanted to burst with the aching feeling that soon this would be all over. The world would want Zachary Hale and he was already pulling away from her.
He kissed the inside of her ankle, her calf, knee. Each kiss made her unreasonably sad and brought her closer and closer to ecstasy. How could she have gotten herself so close to the story, too close for there even to be a story?
“If we keep this up—” the words seemed to grind out of him “—we will run out of condoms at some tragic time.”
“Not absolutely necessary.” Her words as breathy as h
is had been guttural.
He paused for a moment.
“Don’t stop.” This time her words sounded like panic. “I have my end covered, so to speak.”
“As far as I know I’m all right.”
“Then I suggest to you if that desperate time comes, we will consider ourselves safe.”
He trailed kisses along the inside of her thigh and all she could do was keep from melting into a puddle of need at his feet.
“Zach, you make me feel so...well, and all you did was take off a sock.”
He brought the trail of kisses up her body until he pinned her to the door and covered her mouth with his and let his fingers work magic.
After he had his way with her, she took off his clothing and kissed each area she uncovered. All this might end tomorrow, but right now she would take everything from him she could get and she would love it. She would love him.
She was a crazy fool to let her heart take in this man, to have opened herself so far she may never be able to recover from emotions that ran so deeply.
Soon the hot water of the shower cascaded over them and there was no world except the one filled with steam, soap bubbles, a reporter without a story and Zachary Hale. From somewhere came a deep moaning Addy couldn’t seem to stop. Never wanted to stop.
As she took all of him inside her, she had to salute her heart for it’s great taste. She loved him. She loved Zachary Hale and nothing good would come of it and at this very minute she didn’t care.
* * *
ADDY THREW AN arm over her eyes and when she couldn’t shut out the light, rolled over in the vastness of Zach’s bed and groaned. It seemed as if they had barely gone to sleep. The shower had only been the beginning.
And now someone had gone and turned on the lights.
Lights?
The electricity was back on? How was that possible? Did the electric company work during hurricanes to have the power back on so soon?
She didn’t want this new development—at all.
“Zach.” She reached out and when she couldn’t find him, she sat up and pulled the sheets around her. Light streamed into the room from all the east windows.
The sun.
The storm was over.
There was no way she could stay with him and have any kind of credibility when reporting his story.
There was nothing for the two of them outside the confines of this estate.
The pain became emptiness.
“Zach?”
When he didn’t answer, she flopped face down on the bed.
She was alone in the loft.
Alone.
How she hated alone.
Alone was what she had been when Rasa’s deception and her gullibility broke over the internet. The goal of the faction Rasa’s husband belonged to had been to prove how stupid and easily persuaded she and other westerners could be. When the story burst onto the news scene, it had shown Addy’s photo alongside one of Rasa, or whatever her name was. While they had somehow gotten a college yearbook photo of Addy, the woman sat in an armored vehicle with many armed men and they were all laughing. The caption read, “How can these foreigners be trusted with our lives?”
Her friends had all been journalists and they scattered as though she had cholera. Two years before, she had left her family and other friends behind when she chose to pursue Afghanistan and parts east.
She remembered that first night on the futon in her condo with no story to work on or anyone to call. Even the guy at the newsstand on the corner had given her the stink eye when she had gone down to get something to read. She had to shut down her computer because it could not stop showing stories of the journalist about whom there had been Pulitzer buzz. Depending on the slant, she had been duped/stupid/arrogant/too fluffy even to be read, choose one or all, or make up one.
She pulled the feather pillow over her head. No matter what had gone on in her life, nothing would ever be as bad as having this man walk away leaving behind a greedy emptiness.
Zach wasn’t gone yet. He’d comfort her before sending her off to face the world. In the meantime, she’d keep the Huns at bay with a pound or two of down feathers in a pillowcase.
After a few minutes and through the feathers, she heard men’s voices.
Shock almost made her leap from the bed.
For three days she had been holed up with Zach, no outsiders to intrude. No reputations in ruins. No jocular ridicule or accusations or, perhaps the worst, pity.
When she heard footsteps on the stairs she sat up. A moment later Zach entered the loft.
His smile was wan and spoke of things she was sure she did not want to hear. He sat on the edge of the bed and then leaned back until his head rested in her lap.
Oddly, she was reassured because it seemed he felt the way she did.
She soothed the sun kissed hair back from his forehead. “Who were you talking to?”
“Owen Calloway. The man from the place farther up the road. He took a wrench to the generator to get it to work and filled it with fuel.”
“Ah.” She had hoped fervently that Owen had come to tell Zach the road was washed out, that they could go back to bed for the rest of the day, maybe the rest of the week.
Zach smiled up at her. “Not that we needed light to do what we did.”
“I’ve never been more grateful for a power failure.” She bent down and kissed his beautiful mouth.
He nestled his head against her belly. “I wish my life wasn’t redlining.”
“That reporters weren’t hounding you, chasing you even to your family’s estate.”
He lifted his head and captured her gaze with his, his expression earnest and searching. “I’ve never met anyone like you, Addy.”
“That’s a good thing I trust.”
“This might be the last thing I should say, but I’m glad you came. You are the only person I could imagine that could make all this worthwhile. I have no idea what my life will be like when all this shakes out. In today’s world, the truth is only a point of reference. I could be in jail. I could be broke. I might have to live here because it’s all I have left.”
“And after I’ve gotten so used to all the luxuries in your life.”
“You really don’t care about all that stuff, do you?”
“Not so much.”
Addy breathed into the silence, pulling back every time she wanted to cry. She didn’t cry. She’d seen true heartache and pain. Not a disgraced reporter or a dethroned king of finance. She’d seen real pain, and hers was nothing to cry about.
“Maybe we don’t have to chuck all that we’ve been to each other these few days,” she started slowly, not sure where she would go with the thought, only knowing she could not let this all go away forever.
“There’s too much uncertainty for the foreseeable future.”
She stroked his hair. “We could meet in say ten years and see if we’re still attracted to each other at Boston Common. You know, à la An Affair to Remember.”
“Ten years from today? I’ll have gray hair by then. My father had a full head of it by the time he was forty. You wouldn’t even recognize me.”
Addy tried to crush down the feeling of sadness that suddenly tried to overcome her. He wanted to take the sane route, to say goodbye.
“I think I’d recognize you no matter what.” She couldn’t keep the tears from her voice.
He turned and sat up. His soft lips touched one eye and then the other and then gently kissed her lips. “I haven’t had enough of you either, but I can’t let you into my life.”
“I’ve already crashed and burned in my own. How could it get worse?”
“Journalism is rough. The world of finance is take-no-prisoners cutthroat. There’s no caring, no compassion.”
&nb
sp; She put a hand to his cheek and he continued. “It could get worse if you’re connected to me in any way. You’ll have no credibility, and you’ve already had more than enough condemnation in your career.”
He stroked her arm from shoulders to fingertips, but said nothing. There was only one thing to say. Goodbye.
“So, ten years from today it is, in the Common. I guess since the park has been there for almost four hundred years, it will still be there in another ten. Shall we say, noon?” she asked as she joined hands with his.
CHAPTER TEN
ADDY STOOD ON the front steps of the old mansion on Sea Crest and let the view take her breath away. The sky, a rare and brilliant blue, hurt her eyes after so much time spent in semi-darkness. The road that had seemed so destitute and so long when a hurricane was blowing up, now looked like something she’d enjoy on her bike. A good workout with great scenery.
She could not see Owen’s place for the trees and another bend in the road. On his trip to town, the older man had notified O’Reilly’s her car needed to be hauled from the ravine. About the people from the town he said, “Ah-yuh, town could be flatter ’n a pancake and those folk ’ould be out there whistlin’ while they work.” But he said the damage was severe on the south-most end of town and everybody was working hard to put things right.
Below her and spread out at her feet, the village of Bailey’s Cove stretched mostly to the south along the Atlantic Ocean. The homes on the hillside below her seemed intact, but she could see only the leeward side of everything. There might be damage on the southeastern aspect of the homes and businesses, the side that faced the winds. There might also be water in their basements.
She pulled her wrinkled but clean jacket closely around her. Considering the destruction that must lie at the bottom of the hill, her heart went out to the struggling town. Zach had told her how Bailey’s Cove was in a battle to keep its identity and to grow at the same time. This storm would be devastating to their timeline.
From high on the hill, she could see the yacht still floating in the harbor but it seemed to list a bit to one side.
