Impossible Dreams
Page 35
Axell raised his eyebrows at the idea of his former mother-in-law picking up strangers, but the speculative look on Selene’s face caught his eye. He’d wager Selene’s father would be introducing a wealthy, unattached banker to Mayor Arnold’s mother before week’s end.
The high-pitched whine of an electric guitar screamed through an amplifier, rattling the windows. For a minute, Axell thought the sound system had gone berserk. Then he remembered, and groaned. Stephen.
“Don’t look that way,” Maya reprimanded, hurrying toward the front door. “The advance sales on his School-Aid concert have brought in twice the scholarship money we’d hoped to have. We may not even have to mortgage the property to rebuild the school. So come outside and be polite.”
The mayor had closed off all the streets around the school for the concert and ribbon-cutting ceremony. Crowds already poured through the early-September morning, carrying lawn chairs and coolers, elbowing for the shady seats beneath the spreading oaks, greeting friends and neighbors, seeing and being seen. It was the next best thing to a three-ring circus, Axell decided, and grinned. Maya had finally succeeded in turning the town into a circus.
His restaurant and Cleo’s shop would be doing a booming business. He wasn’t about to complain.
“Hey, Cuz!” Ralph Arnold emerged from the business-suited knot of men near the stage to wrap an arm around Maya’s shoulders. “Gonna save a dance for me?”
Grabbing the mayor’s necktie, Selene hauled him sideways and branded his cheek with her lipstick. Ralph flushed, hurriedly removed his arm from Maya, and with an embarrassed grin, wrapped it around Selene’s waist and kissed her cheek. Ralph would damned well ruin his career in politics with Selene at his side, but he’d be one wealthy former mayor. Who was he to stand in the way of true love and improbable matches? Maybe Maya ought to hand Ralph her granddaddy’s journal for a lesson in life and love.
Proudly, Axell watched as Maya swam through the crowd, hugging all and sundry, mother and child alike. She was practically walking on air, and her happiness bubbled through him with a joy he’d never quite known. She’d unlocked something inside him that allowed the sun to shine in and the music to ring as it never had before. The entire street had become one of her kaleidoscopes, swirling with colors and shapes, but this kaleidoscope had sound too — the sound of laughter and love and music.
“Got you by the balls, doesn’t she?” Headley asked dryly, coming up behind him.
“Among other things.” Axell didn’t take offense. Headley was a lonely old man. He wouldn’t understand.
He watched as Stephen helped Constance onto the stage. Constance had been bubbling with excitement for weeks. She was becoming the outgoing child he’d never been.
“I hear the shopping center project is back on.”
Axell shrugged, brought back to the moment. “Maya and Cleo sold the developer a right of way through the field down the road in exchange for an access road through the back of the property so they don’t have to worry about floods anymore. The Garden Club is overseeing the removal of any plants in the way of construction. Maya has a way of working things out.”
Maya had a way of making impossible dreams happen. If only more people would ignore the word “impossible,” mankind could visit Mars and Jupiter, abolish prejudice and poverty, and create Utopia. He’d settle for the sunshine of her love.
“Yeah.” Headley sighed in contentment as Maya swam back in their direction, her smile a brilliant sunbeam as she spotted them. “Maybe she should run for mayor.”
“Over my dead body,” Axell declared boldly, reaching for his flashy wife and dragging her close.
Tipping her head back, she gazed at him through dangerously long lashes. “Is Cleo putting out a contract on your body?” she asked laughingly, wrapping her arms around his waist without an ounce of shyness. “I’ll take care of her.”
And Axell realized with the freedom of love, that she would, that she would take care of him and his daughter and everyone around her, and would make a damned good mayor should she ever put her scattered mind to it. He didn’t have to do it all himself any longer.
He hugged her tight against him and whispered against her hair. “You take care of everyone else. I’ll take care of you. Fair enough?”
“Yeah.” She snuggled blissfully against him as Stephen’s band, with Constance in accompaniment, roared into a rousing rendition of an electronic “Carolina On My Mind,” and the crowd cheered wildly.
About Patricia Rice
With several million books in print and New York Times and USA Today’s bestseller lists under her belt, former CPA Patricia Rice is one of romance’ss hottest authors. Her emotionally-charged contemporary and historical romances have won numerous awards, including the RT Book Reviews Reviewers Choice and Career Achievement Awards. Her books have been honored as Romance Writers of America RITA® finalists in the historical, regency and contemporary categories.
A firm believer in happily-ever-after, Patricia Rice is married to her high school sweetheart and has two children. A native of Kentucky and New York, a past resident of North Carolina, she currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri, and now does accounting only for herself. She is a member of Romance Writers of America, the Authors Guild, and Novelists, Inc.
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Copyright & Credits
Impossible Dreams
A Prequel to The Carolina Series
Patricia Rice
Book View Café edition December 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61138-130-6
Copyright © 2000 Patricia Rice
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not inspired by any person known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
All Rights Reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
Originally published by Ivy Books, The Ballantine Publishing Group
The Carolina Series
Impossible Dreams
Almost Perfect
McCloud’s Woman
Carolina Girl
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Sample Chapter
Almost Perfect
The Carolina Series, Book One
Patricia Rice
Book View Café Edition
December 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61138-131-3
Copyright © 2002 Patricia Rice
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One
I am a rotten person.
Biting her lip, Cleo Alyssum painstakingly printed this fact into her journal. She thought the whole idea of a journal of emotions about as silly as it got, but if the counselor wanted honesty, that�
��s what he would get.
She would do anything to transform herself into the kind of mother Matty needed. Anything.
Of course, that’s how she’d got into this situation in the first place. Sitting back in her desk chair, she gazed out the sagging windowpanes of the old house she was restoring. She missed Matty so desperately, her teeth ached, but the court had set December as the deadline for his return—provided she danced to the steps the counselor called.
Matty needed security and stability, they said, and her sister provided it.
She’d tried suburban life with Maya, but she just couldn’t hack it. Trouble found her too easily in crowds. Out here on the island she could get her head together without too many people in her face. She was far less apt to jeopardize Matty’s return if she stayed away from people.
These last few years she’d learned to restore old buildings, turning decrepit dumps into useful, viable businesses and homes, and she loved the satisfaction of seeing the visible results of her hard work. Too bad the difference she was supposed to be making in herself wasn’t as obvious.
The opportunity to buy a small town hardware store had opened up just as she’d run out of buildings to restore, and at the time, it had seemed ideal. She knew the business inside and out, loved the isolation of the South Carolina coast, and when she’d found this run-down island farmhouse for a steal, she’d known she’d found a home.
The beach cottage down by the shore might be beyond hope, but she hadn’t given up on it yet. Maya and the kids might visit more often if she could fix it up. In the meantime, she was diligently turning the main house into the home she’d never known. She hoped.
If she could only convince her federal supervisor she was a fine, upstanding citizen, she’d be free and clear soon, and almost in a normal world for the first time in her life.
Having a job she could do without hassles from any boss, and a home where she could lock the doors against the world, she thought she finally had a chance of living a civilized life. She wasn’t doing this for the feds, though. Matty deserved a sane mother, and she was doing her best, if the process didn’t kill her first.
At least now when he visited on weekends, she could give him her entire attention, and he seemed to be blossoming into a new kid with the change. Even Maya had noted how much happier he was.
Cleo ran her fingers through her stubby hair and returned to staring at the almost empty page of the notebook. She didn’t think she was capable of verbalizing all her conflicting emotions about her sister. Maya could have written an entire essay on how Cleo felt about her. Cleo would rather hammer nails.
If she compared her mothering skills to Perfect Maya’s, she was destined for failure.
The muffled noise of a car engine diverted her attention. A fresh breeze off the ocean blew through the windows in the back of the house, but the only things coming through the floor-to-ceiling front windows were flies. Thickets of spindly pines, palmettos, and wax myrtle prevented her from seeing the driveway entrance or the rough shell road beyond.
She didn’t encourage visitors and wasn’t expecting anyone. A lost tourist would turn around soon enough.
She returned to the blank page of her journal and printed: People are pains in the a… She struck out the “a” and substituted “butt.”
She crinkled her nose at the result. One word probably wasn’t any more polite than the other.
The smooth hum of the car’s powerful engine hesitated, and Cleo waited for the music of it backing up and turning around. Someone took good care of their machine. She couldn’t hear a single piston out of sync.
She rolled her eyes as the obtuse visitor gunned the engine and roared past the four-foot blinking NO TRESPASSING sign. One would think a message that large would be taken seriously, but tourists determined to reach a secluded beach were nearly unstoppable.
“Nearly” was the operative word here.
Biting her bottom lip again, Cleo reread her two-line entry. She had to go into town and open the store shortly. She didn’t have time for detailed expositions if that’s what the shrink wanted. It looked to her like a few good strong sentences ought to be sufficient.
Adding “Men are the root of all evil” struck her as funny, but she supposed a male counselor wouldn’t appreciate it. She left it there anyway. The counselor had said he wanted honesty. Of course, she was probably sabotaging all her efforts. She’d had enough therapy to acknowledge her self-destructive tendencies. Now, if she’d only apply that knowledge…
She lifted her pen and waited for the car engine to reach the next turn in the half-mile-long lane. The sound of waves crashing in the distance almost drowned out the wicked screech of her mechanical witch. Still, she heard the car tires squeal as they braked. The battery-operated strobe light was particularly effective at keeping teenagers from turning this into a lovers’ lane at night. During the day, well…
She shrugged and capped the pen. That was enough introspection for one day. The counselor ought to know she was a mucked-up mess. She shouldn’t have to lay it out in terms a first grader could understand. Another thought occurred to her, and she grabbed the pen again.
Baring my soul is not my style.
There. That ought to be letting it out enough for one day.
Her head shot up as the car engine drew closer, evidently bypassing the scowling witch. Stupid bastard. What was she supposed to do, dump a load of pig turds on him to get the message across that this was a private drive? That might work if they were in a convertible.
They usually were.
She despised the arrogant, self-confident yuppie asses who thought the whole world was their oyster. Didn’t “Private Property” mean anything to them?
Apparently not. The car engine zoomed right past the pop-up sign she’d rigged in the middle of the lane. Forgetting to turn off the system before she’d left for work, she’d driven around the sign one too many times herself, and the dirt bypass was clearly visible. She’d plant a palmetto there tomorrow.
Slamming the notebook into her desk drawer, she picked up her purse and donned her sunglasses. She hadn’t quite perfected the mechanism to shut the swinging post barrier on the access road. She hated the idea of erecting a fence across there. The moron would simply have to drown if he insisted on using her beach. A bad undertow past the jetty made this a dangerous strip for swimming, but she supposed the NO SWIMMING signs wouldn’t stop the nematode either.
Maybe she could rig a siren to a motion detector. There wasn’t any law out here for it to summon, but tourists wouldn’t know that.
Pulling out her truck keys, she almost didn’t hear the purr of the engine turning into her drive, but the shriek of a hidden peacock warned of the intrusion.
Damn. Did the jerk think the house deserted? Admittedly, she hadn’t bothered painting the weathered gray boards and the sagging shutters, but she kind of thought them picturesque. And it wasn’t as if she’d not littered the place with warning signs.
If the town council insisted on encouraging film crews to work here, she’d be prepared to keep them out. She hadn’t traveled an entire continent to have that California lifestyle follow her.
She waited as the barking guard dog yapped through its entire routine. A real dog would scare the peacocks, but the tape recording was usually effective. Amazing how many people were frightened of barking dogs. The mailman had quit delivering to the door after he’d heard it.
Cleo sighed as the driver shut off the car engine instead of turning around. Determined suckers. Only Maya and Axell ever got this far past her guardians. She could slip out the back way, but curiosity riveted her to the window. She knew she was far enough back not to be seen, but she had a partial view of the walk and porch. She couldn’t wait to see how her intrepid guest reacted to her burglar alert system.
A pair of long-legged, crisply ironed khakis appeared beneath the porch overhang. A man. She should have known. Men had to prove themselves by showing no fear. It didn’t seem to matte
r if they showed no intelligence while they were at it.
The lean torso decked in a tight black polo appeared next. She was sick of looking at fat slugs with pooching white bellies and hairy, sunken chests cluttering the view from the beach. At least this ape strode tall and straight and…
My, my. She stopped chewing her fingernail to relish the loose-limbed swing of wide shoulders and a corded throat topped by a long, angular face with more character than prettiness. He was all length—arms, legs, nose, neck—but they all fit together in a casual sort of package. He had his hands in his pockets as he gazed up at her mildly eccentric porch, so she couldn’t see his fingers, but she’d bet they were a piano teacher’s dream.
Tousled sable hair fell across a tanned brow, and she was almost sorry she’d left the security system on. If he was selling insurance, she wouldn’t mind listening to his pitch just to hear what came out of a package like that.
The aviator sunglasses were a downright sexy trim for this parcel.
“You are under alert!” The loudspeaker blared as soon as the intruder hit the first porch step. She’d used an army drill sergeant for that recording. It would scare the pants off any normal person. This one halted and removed his sunglasses now that he was in shade, but his gaze traced the bellowing voice with curiosity and not fear.
“Turn back now. This is your only warning!”
Cleo bit back a sigh of exasperation as the jerk bent over to examine the step for wires. Did he think her an idiot to put wires where someone could cut them?
“Your location has been verified, and you are now under surveillance. Put up your hands, or we’ll shoot.”
The man straightened and seemed to be whistling as he craned his neck and surveyed the underside of the covered porch from the step.
Shaking her head, Cleo reached for the “off” switch, but she waited for his reaction to the final performance. Sure enough, her visitor disregarded the warning and fearlessly breached the porch gate. Sirens screamed, strobe lights flared, and a fedora-hatted skeleton dropped down between him and the front door.