“It didn’t surprise me when Eric said you were a professional chef,” the boy said. “Or that you work at some fancy restaurant. You gave yourself away a couple of times. Remember?”
“I worked very hard to keep my secret.”
“Why?” he asked directly.
“Because if I’d cooked for you the way I’m trained to cook, you would have known instantly that I was more than I claimed to be.”
“I meant, why did you have to keep who you are such a secret? You could have told me. I wouldn’t have told Eric.”
“I was afraid.”
“We wouldn’t have eaten you…well, Eric might have.” He cleared his throat. “I have something else I want to ask you, and something I want to tell. Which do you want first?”
“The question.”
“All right. Which culinary academy do you recommend?”
“You’ve decided to go back to school?” she asked.
“Just tell me which one and I’ll enroll. I’ve passed my French test, so I have the credit I need. I’ll get my diploma.”
“I’ll ask the school to send you a brochure.”
David said, “All right. Now, to the ‘tell’ part. Eric is eating himself alive up here. I’ve never seen him like this before. He barely talks, he barely eats. Samantha can’t get through to him. I can’t, either. He deals with the guests, but the rest of the time he just sits and stares.”
Eric’s behavior sounded very similar to her own. She cradled the telephone closer to her ear. “Has he said anything about me?” she ventured.
“Only that he saw you. I had to drag your telephone number out of him. If I didn’t have to talk to you about the academy, I don’t think he’d have given it to me.”
Robin stared out the window over the bay. The city of San Francisco looked like a postcard across the water. The sun was shining, the air crisp and clear. But she longed for somewhere farther north. For a much different view.
David spoke again. “Samantha said to tell you that Eric’s been punished enough.”
Robin was startled. “I’m not punishing him!”
“That’s what she said to tell you. I’m just passing it on.”
“Tell Samantha…tell her I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Okay. You won’t forget the brochure?”
“I’ll call them as soon as I hang up.”
“Aw-rright!” David crowed.
Robin hung up and looked at the calendar sitting on the table by the phone. Fifteen days had passed since she’d seen Eric. Fifteen bleak, torturous days.
She called up the academy in San Francisco and gave them David’s address. Then she made another call to Marla at Le Jardin.
As soon as she got off the phone, she hurried to her bedroom and tossed a suitcase onto the bed, opening it as she also opened a drawer. Marla had been worried about her, just as David and Samantha had been worried about Eric. And, wonderful friend that she was, she’d immediately agreed to Robin’s request.
With barely a thought to the thickening evening traffic, Robin rushed to her car and backed quickly out of her parking slot.
DUNNIGAN BAY WAS CLOAKED in a light fog when Robin drove down its single street. The moon, struggling to shed light onto the earth below, lent the night a lustrous glow.
The lights at Heron’s Inn were off, and a sleepy quietness pervaded the entire cove. Robin parked the car and walked quietly up the drive, pausing only long enough in the garden to see if anyone was there. No one was.
She tried one of the French doors. If it was locked, she would wait till morning. If not, she would slip inside. The door swung open to her touch.
She slipped into the room that she knew so well, the night-light from the hall providing enough illumination for her to see that the kitchen was still the same. Henry had done nothing to change it.
She made her way up the servants’ stairway. Had Henry been given the use of Bridget’s room, as well? Was he sleeping in her bed? Did he hang his clothing in the cleared section of her great old wardrobe? Robin felt a twinge of possessiveness, undoubtedly similar to what Bridget must have felt when she’d first heard of her own arrival.
She stepped into the hall on the third floor and turned toward the door where a weak light escaped through the bottom crack. In a strange way, she felt as if she’d never left Heron’s Inn. Her heart rate increased as she stopped at the door and raised her curled hand. She paused, swallowed and gave a light rap with her knuckles.
Long seconds passed before Eric called out, “Just a minute.”
He came to the door in bare feet, wearing only his jeans. When he saw her, his eyes widened in shocked surprise. “Robin?” he said blankly.
Neither shock nor surprise lasted very long. Both emotions were quickly replaced by exhilaration.
“Robin?” he said again as he pulled her into the room and into his arms.
He felt so wonderful, his body so warm and familiar, his kiss the promise of more to come.
Pulling back, he said, “How did you—how long—it’s what…2:00 a.m.?”
Robin slid away from him, holding herself in check. “It’s late,” she said softly.
“I don’t really care what time it is—just that you’re here.”
He came toward her again, ready to wrap her in his arms, but she held him off by placing a hand on his chest.
“We still have to talk,” she said.
“Now?”
“Now.” She kept her hand firmly in place until he backed away a step.
She glanced around the room, the disarray provided evidence of the hours the room’s occupant spent there. A newspaper was spread open on the desk, and an untouched cup of black coffee had grown cold. Several paperback mysteries were scattered, propped open, on the floor near the head of the bed. A shirt hung limply from an oak foot post.
“I wasn’t expecting company,” he murmured.
“Would you like me to leave?” she asked.
“No.” His answer was quick.
“There are several things you have to understand,” Robin began. She had had hours in which to rehearse what she would say. “When I first came here, I didn’t have a plan. My only thought was to meet you, to get to know you…all of you. I’d known about you for years. You’re not the only one to have newspaper clippings.” She drew a breath. “I thought about all of you all the time. I couldn’t get your family out of my mind. I wanted to meet you when I was a child, but my parents wouldn’t let me. So later, when the time was right, I found a way. Only the more I got to know you, the more trapped I became, because of the way I’d come to feel. I couldn’t tell you who I was. You hated me.”
“I don’t hate you now.”
“I know that. But this still has to be said.”
He took a short breath and waited.
She collected her thoughts. “I lied about who I was, because if I’d told you the truth, you wouldn’t have hired me. So I made up a new identity. I became Robin McGrath. You don’t know how many times I wished I was Robin McGrath. Robin McGrath wouldn’t have had to watch every word she said or pretend she didn’t know anything about your family’s history. She could have loved you like you wanted to be loved, without regret, without the past getting in the way.” She paused. “It wasn’t easy, Eric.”
“I didn’t make it easy.”
“There’s something else,” Robin said. “Something I think I owe you. I want to tell you about your dad. If he hadn’t come in after me, Eric, I would have drowned for sure. There’s no question that he saved my life. That one wave was so unexpected. One second I was on the beach, the next I was caught up in this huge surge of water, being dragged offshore.” Her voice wavered. “Your dad…I don’t know where he came from. I didn’t see him until he’d grabbed hold of me. I was so afraid. I’d swallowed a lot of water. And I was so cold. Your dad was a strong swimmer. I tried to help, but we were pushed back and forth. We were thrown against the rocks, only he never let me hit them. I felt the impact through his body. We both wen
t under several times.” She started to cry silently, tears rolling down her cheeks. “He smiled at me. He told me to relax, that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me. That was the last thing…”
Eric swallowed hard.
“A wave threw me on top of the rocks, clear of the water. I saw him trying to swim to where I was, to safety, then another wave hit. And that’s the last time I saw him, until…on the beach…” Her lips trembled uncontrollably.
Eric could stand it no longer. He dragged her into his arms, squeezing her to him, resting his head on hers as if she were a prized possession.
Her tears continued. “I’m so sorry, Eric. So sorry that your father died. If there was anything I could do to change it, I would. If I could die in his place—”
“Don’t say that!” he commanded, his arms drawing her even tighter. “But I was the one on the beach. I was the one who didn’t see the wave. Why did he have to die instead of me? It doesn’t seem fair, Eric! Not to me. Look at all the children he left behind, and what all of you went through without him.”
Eric heard the tortured passion of her words. He knew that this wasn’t the first time she had thought them. In all the years, he had never once considered what the tragedy must have looked like through her eyes.
“Hush…hush,” he repeated, trying to soothe her. For the first time he realized that she had been just as traumatized by the event as he and his siblings had, and his heart filled with empathy. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Robin. What happened in the past has to stay in the past. We can’t change it. We can’t make it be anything other than what it was. My father… My father did what he had to do. He didn’t have any other course open to him. That was the kind of man he was. To stand by when someone—particularly a child—was in trouble would have been completely out of character for him. And he accomplished what he set out to do. If he hadn’t saved you…I don’t want to think about if he hadn’t saved you!”
She tightened her arms around his midsection and buried her face even deeper in his chest, her tears dampening his skin.
He continued, sensing that she needed to hear him put his thoughts into words. “It’s like…you’re a gift he gave to me all those years ago, only I was too blind to see it. I blamed you, I blamed him…because I didn’t get to tell him goodbye.”
She lifted her head, and her beautiful dark brown eyes, washed by tears, alive with love, searched his face. “Would that have helped?” she whispered.
“I think it might. It might have helped all of us.”
“It doesn’t make the pain easier. We knew my dad was going to die, and when the time came…” She bit her lip. “I’m going to have to tell you about my dad sometime. He wasn’t the kind of man you thought him to be. He was thoughtful and kind and…generous.”
“I’ve spent a lot of years being angry with the wrong people, haven’t I?”
“You’ve spent a lot of years being good to people, too. Your brothers and sisters…they’re all nice human beings.”
“A credit to all humanity,” he teased, trying to lighten the tension.
Her smile was watery. “How would you feel about doing it again someday? Or are you all fathered out?”
He reached for a tissue from his bedside table and tenderly blotted her cheeks. “Are you proposing what I think you’re proposing?”
“I’m proposing, yes,” she responded.
He captured her chin between his forefinger and thumb, looked deeply into her eyes and said softly, “I accept,” then lowered his head and claimed her lips in a kiss that tried to impart how desperately he loved her and needed her and wanted her for all of time.
EPILOGUE
SOUNDS OF THE INN COMING slowly to life barely penetrated the tanscendent world Robin and Eric inhabited as they sat at the dining room table, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes.
Robin had never been so happy in her life. All the clouds that had followed her for so many years had disappeared. She could think of the future. Make plans. Plans that included Eric.
“I love you, Robin Farrell,” he said softly, earnestly, using her correct last name.
“You say that so easily now.”
“McGrath…Farrell. It doesn’t matter. It’s you I love, not your name.”
“How do you think the others will feel?”
“About what?”
“Us. Being together. Getting married.”
“They’ll ask why it’s taken us so long.”
“They already know the answer.”
“They’ll still ask.”
“I’m an only child, you know.”
His brow lifted quizzically. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Maybe I’m marrying you for your family.”
“That’s better than not marrying me because of them.”
Robin remembered what Donal Caldwell had once said about Eric’s potential brides being scared off by his large family. “Has that happened to you before?” she asked. She was curious to know if he had ever come close to marrying anyone else.
“Is that a roundabout way of asking if I’ve ever been in love before?”
“Yes,” she answered honestly.
“I’ve been close a couple of times. One didn’t like kids. The other—it just didn’t work out. I liked her, but not enough to live with her for the rest of my life, or she with me.”
“She must have been insane,” Robin teased.
“She merely overlooked my more sterling qualities. Are you jealous?”
“No,” Robin said archly. But she was, and he knew it.
“What about you?” he asked.
“The same. A couple of possibilities. I wanted to be in love more than I actually was in love.”
“What stopped you?” he asked.
She smiled. “I must have been waiting for you.”
Eric chortled at her answer and had started to kiss her when Samantha pushed through the swing door.
Eric and Robin jumped apart like guilty schoolchildren. Then, looking merrily into each other’s eyes, they dissolved into laughter.
“Eric?” Samantha said, confused. But as she registered Robin’s presence, she said in happy disbelief, “Robin! When did you get here? You’re going to stay, right? But of course you are! You’re—” She made a sweeping motion that took in their closeness and beaming smiles. “Oh, I’m so glad! I have to—” She hurred out of the room just as quickly as she entered it.
“The cat’s well and truly out of the bag now,” Eric said. “Give her five minutes and everyone in the place will know everything.”
“It will save us having to make an announcement.”
He grinned. “Do you want a big wedding?”
“Not particularly. Do you?”
“Not particularly.”
“When?”
“As soon as possible.”
Robin thought for a moment and started to count off people to invite. “We want your brothers and sisters there—”
“All we have to do is give them the date and the time. How about tomorrow?”
“—and a few of my friends. Not to mention my mother! A new dress. And what about Bridget? Wouldn’t she feel slighted if we don’t wait for her to get back?”
“Can you arrange all this by the Saturday after next? Bridget’s due back that Friday.”
“You’re certainly in a hurry!”
“I’ve got you, I don’t want to lose you.”
Robin caught his cheeks between her hands. “Eric, you don’t have to worry. You won’t lose me. I don’t plan to let you out of my sight!”
He knew what she was saying. She understood his family and the fear that secretly guided so much of their lives.
“It’s what I want,” he said huskily. “You’re what I want. You’re all I want.”
Then, unable to resist the sweetness so near at hand, he kissed her with all the love that poured freely from his heart.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-1633-4
ROO
M AT HERON’S INN
Copyright © 2011 by Ginger Chambers
Originally published as TILL SEPTEMBER
Copyright © 1994 by Ginger Chambers
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