Room at Heron's Inn

by Ginger Chambers

  The sweet aroma of crushed rose petals wafted in the air. Robin hadn’t realized how tightly she’d been holding them until she noticed the scent. Reflexively, she loosened her grip, but the damage had already been done. Just as it had been done long ago to Eric Marshall and his sisters and brothers.

  “The girl,” she stammered, “the girl he rescued—”

  “Shouldn’t have been where she was.”

  “Wasn’t she…a child?”

  “She was twelve! Old enough to know that there are places along the coast where people just shouldn’t climb on the rocks.”

  I wasn’t climbing on the rocks! Robin wanted to cry. But she couldn’t tell him that. Not without admitting who she was.

  “Her parents should have watched out for her a little better in the first place rather than later,” he continued mysteriously.

  Robin frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  He waved her off. “You don’t have to. It has nothing to do with you.”

  “But if she was just a child—”

  “Our father was just as dead! Samantha barely remembers him. David doesn’t at all.” He motioned to the photo album on the shelf. “All David knows of him is what he’s seen in those snapshots. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why he is the way he is. If maybe I could have done a better job.”

  “You did everything you could. I’m sure of that. I haven’t met Allison and Benjamin yet, but I know that Barbara and Samantha and even David—yes, David, too—appreciate all that you’ve done for them.”

  “Just what do you base that on now? Two weeks’ worth of observation?”

  Robin lifted her chin. He wasn’t going to stop her again with a challenge like that. “Yes,” she stated firmly.

  Eric glared at her. Then, reining in his anger, he offered an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have let things get so intense. As I said, it has nothing to do with you.”

  Robin felt as if she’d been held captive on a runaway roller coaster. Up and down, jerked this way and that. It had very much to do with her.

  “I—I think I’ll go to my room,” she said, starting for the door.

  “If you change your mind and decide you’d like some company…” he began, but didn’t finish.

  Robin froze.

  A second passed, then another, before he murmured faintly, “Such a waste.”

  Robin couldn’t stop herself from turning to look at him. His last words hadn’t meshed with the previous challenge. They’d sounded almost…wistful.

  He stood at the window, holding back the curtains in order to peer outside. But as she very well knew, there was nothing there for him to see.

  When she turned away again, he didn’t notice.

  THE SADNESS THAT ALL too frequently descended upon Eric after any discussion of his father held sway as he stared blindly out the window. He missed his father more than he was willing to admit. He’d been an adult when his father died; he should have been past the point of needing him. The children, yes. But he had already achieved manhood. He also missed his mother. Her sweetness, the soft way she had of showing them they were all loved. He harbored no bitterness toward his mother. She would have done anything she could to have stayed with her children. His father, on the other hand…

  Eric shook his head, rejecting the idea. He didn’t like to think that his father might have made a conscious decision to abandon his own children. But whether he had or not, the outcome was the same.

  What would have happened if he had held back? If on that fateful day he, like most people, had waited for someone else to act? The girl would most likely have been lost. But then they—his family—would still have their parent. And Eric might be the veterinarian he’d always hoped to become. He might be married. He might have children of his own.

  Eric pushed away from the window in disgust. His long-ago dreams had about as much substance as a foggy mist. To keep the record straight, he was a man in the fast lane to solitary, middle-aged innkeeperhood! In a few years, a new photo could be added to the family album: himself, with a nonexistent hairline and a roll of fat settling comfortably around his middle, fussing codgily about the flower beds while he complained to one and all that none of his far-flung family members ever came to visit.

  Eric’s short bark of laughter chased away any lingering melancholia. When he’d been a young go-getter forming future plans, this certainly hadn’t been the lifestyle he’d conceived for himself. Nor was it a particularly appealing prospect today.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE FOG BURNED AWAY rapidly the next morning, saving the coast from a repeat of the day before. With renewed enthusiasm, the visitors to Dunnigan Bay swept out of the inn to explore the countryside. Frank Whittaker and his wife were the last to leave.

  “Where did you put the camera, Alma? I distinctly told you to keep track of it. If we don’t hurry, we’re going to miss the best light. Come on, woman, think!”

  Alma thought, came up with an answer that might please her husband, ran upstairs and then back down again, a beaming smile on her long, rather equine face and the camera held victoriously in her hand.

  “Atta girl!” Frank Whittaker approved, before he ruined the moment by grouching, “Next time, don’t lose it!”

  The pair then collected their picnic basket and bustled through the front door.

  Samantha heaved a huge sigh of relief as she slumped into one of the chairs in the kitchen. “What an awful person!”

  “Alma needs to stand up to him.”

  “Alma needs to pack her bags and leave. No note, nothing. Just disappear over the horizon.”

  Robin smiled. “Is that what you’d do?”

  “I wouldn’t marry a man like Frank Whittaker in the first place.”

  “She must love him.”

  “That’s not my idea of love!” Samantha retorted. “It’s not yours, either, is it?”

  Robin shook her head. “No.”

  “Bridget says true love is selfless. That you think of the other person—what they want and need, what they feel, what’s best for them—before you think of yourself. It has to work both ways, though, not just one person doing all the giving.”

  “Bridget sounds like a wise woman.”

  “I do miss her. It’s like…she’s the closest to a mother I’ve ever had. Since my real mother died, of course,” she hurried to add, in case Robin might think she was slighting her birth mother.

  “I know what you mean,” Robin said.

  Samantha relaxed, and gazed out into the garden. So far, the morning sun had illuminated only a small section of plants and flowers. Moisture still clung to the rest.

  “Our parents were married shortly after they turned nineteen,” Samantha said. “It’s so funny…here I am, twenty-one, and I can’t imagine being married. Much less having a year-old child, like they did.” She paused. “But I suppose it was a good thing they started early. Considering what happened and all. They didn’t have a lot of time, like some people do.”

  Robin had decided earlier that morning to make the test cake at her first opportunity. After breakfast, she had finally found the time to start gathering the necessary ingredients. But as she listened to Samantha, her actions slowed.

  “I’m also the age Eric was when he had to quit college to take care of us,” Samantha continued, shaking her head. “I can’t imagine doing that, either. David was still in diapers! And I wasn’t much better. No wonder Eric gets upset when anyone talks about the accident. Bridget says it’s not good for him, though. She says it’s wrong for a person to keep that kind of anger inside them for too long. But she doesn’t say that to Eric anymore. He won’t listen.”

  “Is that why you didn’t want him to know what we were talking about last night when he found us looking at the photo album?”

  “Yes.”

  “We talked about it anyway.”

  “Did he tell you about the girl?”

  Robin nodded.

  “Then you see what I mean.”r />
  “But she was so young!”

  “That doesn’t seem to matter. It also didn’t help that her father came to see Eric a short time after our dad died.”

  Robin’s breath caught. Her father? Had gone to see the Marshalls?

  Samantha shook her mane of hair and tied a portion of it up with a ribbon she pulled from her pocket. “I don’t remember it, of course, but the story goes that the girl’s father showed up one day on the doorstep, check in hand, as if money could make up for the loss of our father. When he tried to give it to Eric, Eric exploded. He threw the man out and told him never to try to contact any member of our family again…that we didn’t want his blood money…that he and his daughter would just have to live the rest of their lives with our father’s death on their conscience. Eric didn’t know it, but Benjamin was in the next room. He told the rest of us what he heard.”

  Blood money. Her poor father! He had been a quiet, shy man…often having trouble expressing himself. If he had offered the Marshalls money, it had not been as a sop to his conscience, as they thought, but to ease their way. Throughout his life he had helped many people in need. Now she also knew another reason, possibly the primary reason, that her parents hadn’t wanted her to initiate any contact with the Marshalls when she was young. They hadn’t wanted her to receive the same treatment.

  “Did you have a hard time financially?” she asked.

  “A fund was started by some people in the community shortly after our father’s funeral. Eric made sure, as best he could, that none of the man’s money was in it. That was the only way he’d agree to use it. The house was all ours, since Dad had taken out an insurance policy that paid off the loan. We did okay. Then we came up here.”

  “I…I still can’t help thinking about the girl.”

  “Roberta Farrell. That was her name. I often wonder what happened to her. But don’t tell Eric I said that! And don’t ever mention her name!”

  “I won’t,” Robin promised.

  Samantha flashed her a quick smile of camaraderie and then stood up. “Well, I have to get busy. You know Benjamin and Allison are coming up this weekend for David’s birthday, right? And the twins? You’ll finally get to meet them!”

  “Is there going to be a party? For David, I mean.”

  Samantha shook her head, making her mass of blond hair bounce. “Nothing formal,” she said. “Just everyone getting together. Kind of low-key.”

  “A special meal? A cake?” Robin persisted.

  “You’ll have to ask Eric. Last year when we tried to have a special dinner, David ended up stomping out halfway through.”

  When she was alone again, Robin tried to take up where she’d left off but found it difficult.

  What did she do now? The situation seemed to be getting more and more complicated. When she’d first come here, she’d vaguely speculated that after a time she might tell them who she was. That is, if things worked out in the way she hoped. Now, the more she became involved in their lives, the more she knew that the matter could never end that simply. If she told them who she was, Eric would instantly dismiss her. And she wasn’t ready to leave Heron’s Inn yet.

  With exaggerated care, Robin placed the large glass bowl into position on the mixer and forced herself to concentrate on her work.

  FOR THE FAMILY, LUNCH consisted mainly of leftovers from the day before. No particular time was set for eating. Most midday meals were reheated in the microwave and eaten in ones and twos at the small table in the kitchen. Dishes were racked immediately in the dishwasher. Robin had little to do from that point until it was time to start dinner. Often she spent her free time in the garden, tending the little patch of herbs and vegetables that Bridget had planted earlier in the season.

  That afternoon, she used the time to continue making the sample decorations for the test cake, her talented fingers shaping delicate-looking petals for sweetheart roses, sweet peas, a large cluster of Dainty Bess roses and the tiny filler flowers of eriostemon. This cake, of course, would be on a much smaller scale than the final version she would prepare for the actual wedding. That is, if her work met with everyone’s approval, especially the hard-to-please Eileen.

  Tonight, after dinner, she planned to put it all together—the deliciously scented almond white cake and the decorations—then show it to Barbara. Barbara was the person she most wanted to please.

  She was transferring the last sugar-flower petals to the counter beside the cooling cake when Eric came up behind her. She hadn’t seen him since early that morning. He’d either skipped lunch or been away from the inn.

  “If I didn’t already know where the kitchen is, I’d have no problem finding it,” he said jokingly. “All I had to do was follow my nose.” He leaned over to see what she was doing. “That smells wonderful.”

  “It’s Barbara’s test cake,” Robin replied.

  His eyes skimmed the delicate decorations, a few already assembled. “You did all this?”

  She went to the sink to wash her hands. “Yes. I told you I once worked at a bakery.”

  “That must have been some bakery.”

  “It was.” Her replies were terse and a little cooler than she’d intended.

  He leaned against the counter. “You’re full of little surprises,” he murmured.

  “Isn’t everyone?” She started to clear the counter. She refused to look at him.

  “Some more than others,” he said.

  “Yourself excluded, I suppose?”

  “Me most of all. Did you miss me earlier?”

  “You were missing?”

  He grunted. “That was below the belt!”

  “I hit where I have to,” she said tightly.

  He straightened, frowning, for the first time realizing that something was wrong. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Something sure is! Last night—” His frown eased as he thought he’d come up with the reason. “You’re angry about last night!”

  “I’m not angry about anything.”

  “About what happened.”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “That’s not the way you felt last night.”

  “Look!” She turned to him in exasperation. “Can’t we just—”

  “You say you’re not married. Are you involved with someone? Is that it?”

  “There’s no one else.”

  “Then what is it? Don’t tell me you don’t feel the same attraction that I do, because I won’t believe it.”

  “Your ego is outrageous!”

  “My ego doesn’t enter into it. I’m struggling here, Robin. Trying to understand.”

  “Maybe you should stop trying so hard.”

  He dragged a hand through his hair. “This doesn’t make any sense!” He started to pace, then stopped directly in front of her. “All right, Maybe I am pushing this too hard, too fast. Maybe I should pull back a little. But I can’t ignore the way I feel about you. You’re different, Robin. Different from anyone I’ve ever met. I want to get to know you—really know you.”

  Robin swallowed tightly. That was the last thing she could let happen. Still, she said nothing.

  His gaze searched hers. “By your silence, I’ll assume you agree.” His hand slid up and down her arm, then he squeezed it and walked away.

  For a long period of time afterward, all Robin could do was stare at the empty doorway.

  “IT’S ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL!” Barbara breathed hours later, her pale eyes focused raptly on the cake. “I can’t believe it. You actually made this?” She turned to Robin for confirmation.

  Robin was pleased. “I did.”

  “Eileen is going to faint!” Barbara pronounced. “She’s not going to believe that someone so close to home—I have to call her. She’ll want to come over right away. Is that all right? It’s not too late for you?”

  Robin hadn’t been getting a lot of sleep lately, so whether she spent her time upstairs or down didn’t matter. “Sure, call her,” she
agreed. “I don’t mind.”

  “It’s eleven o’clock now. She’ll be here by eleven-thirty at the latest.”

  “I don’t mind,” Robin repeated.

  Barbara rushed off to make her call.

  Donal Caldwell tottered into the kitchen, carrying an empty teacup. The old man looked fragile, but after observing him over the past couple of weeks, Robin knew he was much stronger than he seemed. He was very quiet and seldom bothered anyone, preferring instead to spend most of his time outdoors with his paints and canvases. The Marshalls treated him with fondness, like an adopted elderly uncle. He was the only guest scheduled to remain at the inn the week of the wedding.

  He examined the cake critically, then turned his gaze on Robin, his small dark eyes glittering with interest. “You did this?” he asked, motioning with his teacup to the cake.

  Robin nodded.

  “You have an artist’s eye,” he said. “You should do something with it. Not waste it in a kitchen.”

  Robin smiled. “A person can be an artist in the kitchen, too, you know.”

  “Waste of time. Everything gets eaten!”

  “As long as it’s enjoyed first, does it matter?”

  The old man shook his head and Robin laughed. He started to smile. “Guess it takes all kinds,” he said. “I’m after another cup of tea. I’m trying to finish a book, but I keep falling asleep.”

  Robin filled the teakettle and put it on a burner to heat. She and the old man had talked briefly several times, but this was the first opportunity they had had for a longer conversation.

  He settled in a chair. “You fit in here,” he said, unknowingly echoing the verdict of the others. “A lot of young folks wouldn’t. They like to have a lot of hustle and bustle around, a lot of noise. And that’s fine, nothing wrong with it, if that’s what you want. Young David…he thinks he wants it. But I’m not so sure he’d be happy once he got it. Benjamin, on the other hand…Benjamin’s a joker. He enjoys an audience. He’ll make an excellent lawyer.”

  When he paused for breath, Robin commented, “You know the family very well.”