by Nora Roberts
She fell silent again. It was all too embarrassing. And there were still little hot licks of panic flickering in her stomach.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw the moon-kissed sweep of Big Sur, the rise of cliffs, the flash of forests, the wild curve of the road with thin mists of fog hovering. Tears stung her eyes. She’d asked him to take her home, and he’d understood. Home was Templeton House.
The lights were glowing against the windows. Glowing in a warmth and welcome that was as dependable as sunrise. She could smell the flowers, hear the sea. Even before he had fully stopped the car at the top of the drive, the door swung open. Laura raced out.
“Oh, honey, are you all right?” Her robe swirling around her legs, Laura wrenched open the car door and all but absorbed Kate into her arms. “I’ve been so worried!”
“It’s all right. It’s so silly. I—” Then she spotted Ann hurrying out and nearly broke.
“There, darling girl.” Crooning, Ann tucked an arm around Kate’s waist. “Let’s get you inside now.”
“I—” But it was too easy to just let her head rest on Ann’s shoulder. Here were memories of warm cookies and sweet tea. Of soft sheets and cool hands.
“Byron.” Laura cast a distracted look back at him. “I’m so grateful you called. I—” She looked toward Kate, already halfway to the house with Ann. “Please come in. Let me get you some coffee.”
“No, I’ll head on home.” It was obvious that Laura was oblivious to everyone but Kate. “I’ll come by later and see how she is. Go ahead.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much.” She dashed away.
He watched her catch up and flank Kate on the other side. The three of them slipped into the house as one.
She slept for twelve hours and awakened rested and dazed. She was in the room of her middle childhood. The wallpaper was the same, the subtle pastel stripes. The blinds of her late adolescence had been replaced by lace curtains that swayed at the open windows. They had been Kate’s grandmother’s. Had hung in her own mother’s bedroom. Aunt Susie had thought they would bring her comfort when she had first settled in Templeton House, and she’d been right.
They brought her comfort now.
There had been many a morning Kate had lain in the big, soft four-poster and watched those curtains flutter. And felt her parents close.
If she could just talk to them now, she thought. Just try to understand why her father had done what he had done. But what comfort would there be in that? What excuse could possibly justify it?
She had to concentrate on the now. Had to find a way to live in the now. And yet how could she not drift back?
It was the house, most of all, she supposed. It held so many memories. There was history here, eras, people, ghosts. Like the cliffs, the forests, those wildly shaped cypress trees, it held magic.
She turned her face into the pillow, encased in Irish linen. Ann always saw to it that the bed linen was scented lightly with lemon. There were flowers on the night table, a Waterford vase filled with sweet-smelling freesia. A note was propped against it. Recognizing Laura’s handwriting, she stirred herself to reach out.
Kate, I didn’t want to wake you when I left. Margo and I are at the shop this morning. We don’t want to see you there. Annie has agreed to lock you in your room if necessary. You’re to take your next dose at eleven sharp, unless you sleep through it. One of us will come home at lunchtime. You’re expected to stay in bed. If you ever scare us like this again . . . I’ll threaten you in person. I love you, Laura.
Just like her, Kate mused, and set the note aside. But she couldn’t very well stay in bed all day. Too much thinking time in bed. No, she decided to call it by its name: brooding time. So she would find something to keep her from brooding. Her briefcase had to be somewhere, she decided. She’d just—
“And what do you think you’re about, young lady?” Ann Sullivan stood in the doorway with a tray in her hand and a hard light in her eyes.
“I was going to . . . go to the bathroom. That’s all.” Cautiously Kate finished climbing out of bed and ducked into the adjoining bath.
Smiling, Ann set down the tray and moved to fluff the pillows. All her girls thought they could lie when the chips were down, she mused. And only Margo was any good at it. She waited, her back soldier straight, until Kate came back in. Then Ann merely pointed at the bed.
“Now, I’m going to see to it that you eat, take your medicine, and behave yourself.” With smooth efficiency, Ann fit the tray over Kate’s lap. “An ulcer, is it? Well, we’re not putting up with that. No, indeed. Now Mrs. Williamson has fixed you some nice soft scrambled eggs and toast. And there’s herb tea. She says chamomile will soothe your innards. You’ll eat the fruit too. The melon’s very mild.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She felt as though she could eat for hours. “Annie, I’m sorry.”
“For what? For being knotheaded? Well, you should be.” But she sat on the edge of the bed and, in the time-honored fashion, laid her hand over Kate’s brow to test for fever. “Working yourself up until you’re sick. And look at you, Miss Kate, nothing but a bag of bones. Eat every bite of those eggs.”
“I thought it was heartburn,” she murmured, then bit her lip. “Or cancer.”
“What is this nonsense?” Appalled, Ann snagged Kate’s chin in her hand. “You were worrying you had cancer and did nothing about it?”
“Well, I figured if it was heartburn I could live with it. And if it was cancer, I’d just die anyway.” She grimaced at the violent glare. “I feel like such a fool.”
“I’m glad to hear it, for you are.” Clucking her tongue, Annie poured Kate’s tea. “Miss Kate, I love you, but never in my life have I been more angry with anyone. No, you don’t. Don’t you dare tear up while I’m yelling at you.”
Kate sniffled, took the tissue Ann held out, and blew her nose fiercely. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Be sorry, then.” Exasperated, she handed over another tissue. “I thought Margo was the only one of you who could make me crazy. You may have waited twenty years to do it, my girl, but you’ve matched her. Did you once tell your family you were feeling poorly? Did you once think what it would mean to us if you ended up in the hospital?”
“I thought I could handle it.”
“Well, you couldn’t, could you?”
“No.”
“Eat those eggs before they’re cold. There’s Mrs. Williamson down in the kitchen, fretting over you. And old Joe the gardener cutting his precious freesia so you could wake to them. That’s to say nothing of Margo, who kept me on the phone thirty minutes or more this morning, so worked up over you, she is. And Mr. Josh, who came by and looked in on you before he would go on to his work. And do you think Miss Laura got a wink of sleep last night?”
As she lectured, Ann piled toast with raspberry preserves and handed it to Kate. “That’s to say nothing of how the Templetons are going to feel when they hear.”
“Oh, Annie, please don’t—”
“Don’t tell them?” Ann said, with a fierce look at Kate. “Is that what you were going to say, missy? Don’t tell the people who loved and cared for you, who gave you a home and a family?”
No one, Kate thought miserably, piled on jam or shame like Ann Sullivan. “No. I’ll call them myself. Today.”
“That’s better. And when you’re feeling more yourself, you’re going to go and thank Mr. De Witt in person for taking care of you.”
“I . . .” Foreseeing fresh humiliation, Kate toyed with her eggs. “I did thank him.”
“And you’ll thank him again.” She glanced up as a maid knocked quietly on the open door.
“Excuse me. These just arrived for Miss Powell.” She carried in a long white florist’s box and set it on the foot of the bed.
“Thank you, Jenny. Wait just a moment and we’ll see what vase we’ll use. No, you finish eating,” Ann continued. “I’ll open this.”
She undid the bow, opened the lid, and the room was fil
led with the scent of roses. Two dozen long-stemmed yellows bloomed against a bed of glossy green. She allowed herself one quiet, feminine sigh.
“Fetch the Baccarat, will you, Jenny? The tall one in the library breakfront.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now I know I’m sick.” Cheered, Kate plucked up the envelope. “Imagine Margo sending me a bunch of flowers.” But when she tore out the card, her jaw dropped.
“Not from Margo, I take it.” With the privilege of time and affection, Ann slipped the card out of Kate’s fingers and read, “ ‘Relax, Byron.’ Well, well, well.”
“It’s nothing to ‘well’ about. He’s just feeling sorry for me.”
“Two dozen yellow roses are something aside from sympathy, girl. That’s moving toward romance.”
“Hardly.”
“Seduction, anyway.”
Kate remembered the wild embrace in his kitchen. Hot, intense, rudely interrupted. “Maybe. Sort of. If I was the seducing type.”
“We all are. Thank you, Jenny. I’ll take it from here.”
Ann took the vase from the maid and went into the bathroom to fill it. She wasn’t surprised, and not just a little pleased, to see Kate sniffing thoughtfully at one of the blooms when she came back.
“Drink your tea now while I arrange these. It’s a relaxing thing, arranging flowers.”
She took a pair of scissors from the old kneehole desk, spread the tissue that had covered the flowers on the dresser, and got to work. “Something you take your time about, enjoy. Plunking them by the handful into a handy vase doesn’t bring any joy.”
Kate dragged her thoughts away from detailing a list of Byron De Witt’s qualities. Confident, kind, interfering, sexy, meddlesome. Sexy. “It gets the job done.”
“If that’s all you’re after. In my opinion, Miss Kate, you’ve always been in a hurry to get the job done, whatever it may be. You’ve forgotten the pleasure of doing. Rushing through something to get to the next something might be productive, but it’s not fun.”
“I have fun,” Kate muttered.
“Do you now? From what I’ve seen, you’ve even turned your weekly treasure hunts into a scheduled chore. Let me ask you this. If you were, by some wild chance in your quest for efficiency, to stumble over Seraphina’s dowry, what would you do with it?”
“Do with it?”
“That’s what I asked. Would you take the riches and sail around the world, lie on some lazy beach, buy a fancy car? Or would you invest it in mutual funds and tax-free bonds?”
“Properly invested, money makes money.”
Ann slipped a stem gently into the vase. “And for what? So it can pile up neatly in some vault? Is that the only means to the end, or end to the means? Not that you haven’t done a tidy job with helping me build up a fine nest egg, darling, but you’ve got to have dreams. And sometimes they have to be beyond your immediate reach.”
“I have plans.”
“I didn’t say plans. I said dreams.” Wasn’t it odd, Ann mused. Her own daughter had always dreamed too much. Miss Laura had dreamed simple dreams that had broken her heart. And little Miss Kate had never let herself dream enough. “What are you waiting for, darling? To be as old as me before you indulge yourself, enjoy yourself?”
“You’re not old, Annie,” Kate said softly. “You’ll never be old.”
“Tell that to the lines that crop up on my face daily.” But she smiled as she turned. “What are you waiting for, Katie?”
“I don’t know. Exactly.” Her gaze shifted to the crystal vase behind Ann, filled to bursting with yellow flowers that glowed like sunlight. She could, if she bothered to, count on one hand the number of times a man had sent her roses. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
“Then it’s time you did. Top of the list is what makes Kate happy. You’re good at list making, God knows,” she said briskly, then went to the closet for the robe Kate always left in her room at Templeton House. “Now you can sit out on the terrace in the sun for a while. You sit there and do nothing but dream for a bit.”
Chapter Nine
A week of pampering was excellent medicine. For Kate it was also nearly an overdose. Yet anytime she made noises about going home and getting back to work, everyone within earshot ganged up on her.
Telling herself she would turn over a new leaf if it killed her, she struggled to let it ride, to go with the flow, to take life as it came.
And wondered how anyone could live that way.
She reminded herself that it was a gorgeous evening. That she was sitting in the garden with a child snuggled in her lap, another at her feet. Her ulcer—if it was an ulcer—hadn’t given her any real trouble in days.
And she had found there, in the home of her childhood, a peace that had been missing.
“I wish you could live with us forever and ever, Aunt Kate.” Kayla looked up, her gray eyes soft in her angel’s face. “We’d never let you get sick or worry too much.”
“Aunt Margo says you’re a professional nitpicker.” Ali giggled at the term and carefully brushed pink polish on Kate’s toenails. “What’s a nit?”
“Aunt Margo.” Wasn’t it bad enough, Kate thought, that she was going to have hot-pink toenails, without adding insult to injury? “Good thing for her I happen to like nits.”
“If you didn’t go back to your apartment, we could play with you every day.” For Kayla, this was the ultimate bribe. “And you and Mama could have tea parties like Annie said you used to when you were little.”
“We can all have tea parties when I come visit,” Kate reminded her. “That’s more special.”
“But if you lived here, you wouldn’t have to pay rent.” Ali capped the polish and looked entirely too wise for a ten year old. “Until you regain your financial feet.”
A fresh smile flitted around Kate’s mouth. “Where’d you get that?”
“You’re always saying stuff like that.” Ali smiled and pressed her cheek against Kate’s knee. “And Mama’s working a lot now and nothing’s the way it used to be. It’s better with you here.”
“I like being with you, too.”
Touched and torn, Kate stroked Ali’s curly hair. A sunshine-yellow butterfly flitted through the air and landed gracefully in the cup of a red petunia. For a moment, Kate caressed the child and watched the butterfly’s wings gently open and close as it fed.
How hard would it be, she wondered, to simply stay here, like this, forever? Just drift. Forget everything. Not hard at all, she realized. And wasn’t that part of the reason it wasn’t possible for her?
“I have to go back to my own place. That doesn’t mean I won’t spend lots of time with you. Every Sunday for sure, so we can find all of Seraphina’s gold.”
She looked up in relief at the sound of footsteps. If this kept up, she’d be ready to agree to anything her nieces wanted. “There’s the nit now.”
Margo only raised an elegant eyebrow as the girls giggled. “I’ll consider that a private joke. I’m too jazzed to be annoyed with you. Look!” After tugging up her sleek linen tunic, she pulled out the elastic waist of her slacks. “I couldn’t get my skirt zipped this morning. I’m starting to show.” Her face glowing, she turned to the side. “Can you tell?”
“You look like a beached whale,” Kate said dryly, but Kayla bounced up and rushed over to press an ear against Margo’s tummy.
“I can’t hear him yet,” she complained. “Are you sure he’s in there?”
“Absolutely sure, but I can’t guarantee the he part.” Abruptly her lips trembled, her eyes filled. “Kate, it moved. This afternoon I was helping a customer decide between an Armani and a Donna Karan, and I felt this, this fluttering. I felt the baby move. I felt—I felt—” She broke off and burst into wild tears.
“Oh, Jesus.” Jolting up, Kate gathered the goggle-eyed girls and nudged them toward the flagstone path. “This is a good thing,” she assured them. “She’s crying because she’s happy. Tell Mrs. Williamson we want a whol
e jug of lemonade, the kind she makes that fizzes.”
Whirling back to Margo, she hugged her close. “I was only kidding before. You’re not fat.”
“I want to be fat,” Margo sobbed. “I want to waddle. I want to stop being able to sleep on my stomach.”
“Okay.” Torn between amusement and concern, Kate patted her. “Okay, honey, you will. In fact, I think you’re already starting to waddle. A little.”
“Really?” Margo sniffed, caught herself. “Oh, shit, listen to me. I’m crazy. I’m doing this kind of thing all the time these days. I felt the baby move, Kate. I’m going to have a baby. I don’t know anything about being a mother. I’m so scared. I’m so happy. Hell, I’ve wrecked my mascara.”
“Thank God, she’s coming back.” A little shaky herself, she eased Margo into a chair. “What does Josh do when you have one of these crying jags?”
“Passes the tissues.”
“Great.” Without much hope, Kate searched her pockets. “I don’t have any.”
“I do.” Margo sniffed and blew and sighed. “Wacky hormones.” She used a fresh tissue to dab, then ran an expert hand over her fancy French braid. “I came out here to see how you were feeling.”
“Unlike you, there doesn’t seem to be anything going on in my stomach. It’s fine. I think that ulcer business was just bullshit.”
Recovered, Margo lifted a brow. “Oh, do you? Do you really?”
Because she recognized that tone, Kate braced for a fight. “Don’t start on me.”
“I’ve waited for days to start on you. But you’re feeling fine now. So I can tell you, you’re an insensitive, selfish idiot. You sent everyone who has the poor judgment to care about you into a tailspin of worry.”
“Oh, and it would have been sensitive and selfless of me to whine and complain—which you’re an expert at—and—”
“Take care of yourself,” Margo finished. “See a doctor. No, not you, you’re too smart for that, too busy for that.”
