Christmas in Time

by Peggy Webb

  The survivors went still. It was if loving arms had reached out to gather them close.

  As lifeboat fourteen rowed to safety beyond the pull of the sinking ship, Gilly strained to hear the music. Suddenly the lights of the Titanic went out. With an agonizing death gasp, the ship plunged into the sea.

  The music stopped.

  So did Gilly’s heart.

  CHAPTER NINE

  She sat up in bed, gasping.

  “William?” she called, but there was no answer, only the faint tinkle of the Christmas wind chime Ann had sent from New York.

  She glanced at the glowing face of her bedside clock. It was 2:20 a.m., the exact moment the Titanic had gone down.

  Gilly lay back down and pulled the covers to her chin.

  She had lived. While some considered it a miracle, she considered it a tragedy. The years without William had been long and sometimes lonely. Still, she’d preferred her memories and the life of what most folks called an old maid to the falsehood of life with another man.

  o0o

  Gilly turned her head and tried to see out the window. She couldn’t see a thing beyond the glass panes except blackness. Drat her old eyes.

  “Is the forsythia in bloom?”

  “Aunt Gilly?” Her niece jumped out of a chair, bent over Gilly’s bed and placed a cool cloth on her head. “You’re awake.”

  “Of course, I’m awake. Is the forsythia blooming? It always blooms in April.”

  “Yes. It’s blooming.”

  “Open the shade so I can see.”

  “You’re in the hospital, Aunt Gilly. And it’s midnight.”

  Gilly felt foolish. She knew she was dying. And now, thanks to her doctor who had insisted she go into the hospital and take a bunch of pain killers, so did everybody else.

  She remembered how Margaret had cried and said, “Why didn’t you tell me about the cancer?” How Ann had flown down from New York, also sputtering about Gilly keeping secrets.

  She was dying, all right. But not in any darned hospital bed.

  The creak of rubber soles outside her door alerted her that the night nurse was coming, that she’d be bringing that horse pill she wanted her patient to swallow so Gilly wouldn’t have any more idea of what was going on than a newborn.

  Sure enough, the white cap appeared around her door, then the grinning nurse who, as far as Gilly could tell, didn’t have a thing to smile about. Surrounded by the sick and the dying.

  “Time for your medicine, Miss Debeau.”

  “I’m not taking it.”

  “Now, now, dear. You know you have to take your medicine.”

  “Not tonight.”

  The nurse glanced toward Ann for reinforcements, but Gilly’s niece was nobody’s fool. When Ann said, “You can take the pill away,” the nurse turned toward the chair in the corner.

  “Gilly doesn’t want that pill, so you just take it back where it came from.”

  Margaret. Gilly had forgotten that her old friend was still there. Actually, Margaret had scarcely left her side in the last few days, going home only to change clothes and brush her teeth.

  The nurse bustled out, and Gilly said, “I want to go home.”

  Ann patted her hand. “I know you do, Aunt Gilly.”

  “Maybe soon.” Margaret’s attempt at hopeful failed miserably.

  Gilly tried to throw back the covers but only succeeded in getting the sheet tangled around her waist.

  “If you don’t take me home, I’m going on my own.” She tried to lift herself off the bed, but fell back against the pillows.

  Margaret jumped out of her chair and came to stand beside the bed.

  “Please, Margaret,” Gilly whispered.

  Margaret looked at her a while then nodded. “Ann, get a wheelchair ready. We’re getting Gilly out of here.”

  “The doctor is not going to dismiss her.”

  Margaret already had the telephone in her hand, dialing. “The day I let a doctor barely older than my golden retriever tell me what to do is the day you can take away my driver’s license and put me in the old folks’ home.”

  Gilly smiled.

  o0o

  The sea was flat calm, its waters lapping gently against the Gulf shore. A few feet away, a strange trio had gathered on the beach – a sturdy older woman with her head scarf blowing in the breeze, a young woman whose cheeks glistened with tears, and a gray-haired woman sitting in the wheelchair between the two, her frail shoulders wrapped in a man’s coat.

  At 2:20 in the morning, April 14th , Gilly Debeau looked across the water and saw William Wesley striding toward her, violin tucked under his chin and bow poised over the strings. He smiled at her, his dark eyes alight.

  As she rose from the wheelchair to meet him, the cloak of age fell away and she was eighteen again, her feet flying over the water, the sequins on her French cut ball gown sparkling in the starlight.

  William’s bow struck strings and Melody of Love filled the air. Swirling in music and starlight, Gilly raced into the arms of the man who had waited a lifetime for her.

  -o0o-

  CHAPTER ONE, Excerpt from Only Yesterday

  by Peggy Webb

  (sequel to Christmas in Time)

  She hadn't set out to buy a clock that day. She'd been intent on getting a new latch for the screen door. But the temperature hovered near ninety, and Ann had detoured by the ice-cream shop to get something cool to eat, then she'd caught a glimpse of the sign over the door of the quaint little shop in the middle of the block. Blast from the Past the sign promised, and she wasn't disappointed by the delivery.

  John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, and James Dean stood in the back of the shop, life-size, cardboard smiles frozen for posterity. Through the speakers mounted over the soda fountain, Percy Sledge crooned, "When a Man Loves a Woman." A leather trunk plastered with stickers from the Hotel Palace in Mar del Plata and the Continental Hotel in Tangier hinted of grand adventures in times gone by.

  But it was the clock that drew her to the shelves at the back of the store, a black plastic cat, tail wagging, big pop eyes rolling.

  "Aren't you the sassiest little thing?" Standing on tiptoe, she tried to get the clock off the shelf, but it was out of reach.

  Out of the blue a pair of very tanned, very masculine hands plucked the clock from the shelf. Ann was not the kind of woman who agonized over possessions, but all of a sudden she wanted that clock in a way that made her almost frantic.

  "That's my clock."

  She whirled around, puffed up for a fight, but what she saw took the wind right out of her sails. He had a smile that would light the entire South in a blackout and enough body heat to raise the temperature ten degrees. He was standing so close, her nose was only inches away from his broad chest, and he showed no intention of moving. Furthermore, she'd stepped on his fine black leather boots.

  "Pardon me." Her apology only increased his amusement. Ann wanted to hit something.

  "Do you always talk to yourself?" he asked.

  His voice matched the rest of him, big and dark and mysterious, the kind of voice that set foolish women shivering. Darned if she hadn't joined the ranks of the foolish. Her tank top was plastered to her back with sweat, but she was shivering like a willow in a spring storm. And over a perfect stranger.

  Ann felt like a traitor. Unconsciously she twisted the diamond on her finger. The minute she got to Windchime House she would phone Rob.

  "Don't you ever reply to anything anybody says to you?" She removed her foot from his boot and tried to take a step back, but the shelves were in her way. This gloriously gorgeous man had her trapped and had her clock, to boot, and she couldn't even muster up enough sparks for a stinging rebuke.

  "Down here we do things in a more leisurely fashion."

  Leaning in close, he propped one elbow on the shelf near her head. Ann wondered why swooning had gone out of style. For a moment she thought about reviving the lost Victorian art, right there in the heart of downtown Fairhope, Alaba
ma.

  "For instance, we introduce ourselves, and then if we like the person we've just met, we might sit down together and have a cool drink of lemonade." He turned up the voltage on his smile. "Colt Butler. I'm buying."

  "I'm engaged."

  The minute the words were out of her mouth she wanted to bite her tongue off. She sounded prissy and defensive, two qualities she deplored.

  "My congratulations to the lucky man."

  He actually tipped his hat, a battered old baseball cap without lettering, a faded butternut twill that looked soft to the touch. Ann curled her fingers tightly together to keep from reaching toward that tattered cap. Seeking relief, she slid her gaze lower. It came to rest on a pair of shocking blue eyes. As brilliant as neon. As mesmerizing as bits of bottle glass found in the surf.

  When her toes curled under she knew she was in serious trouble. The Debeau curse.

  "When your toes curl under, that's when you know," her great aunt Gilly had told her. Had it been only weeks ago?

  "Know what, Aunt Gilly?"

  "That it's true love."

  Ann had laughed. She'd waited years for the famous Debeau sign, but when she'd met Rob she knew that love was choice, not fate.

  "Rob and I don't need silly signs. When something is right, it's right, Aunt Gilly."

  "Sooner or later it happens to all the Debeau women."

  "You're going to love Rob. You'll be the first to dance at our wedding. In fact, I'm going to send you a ticket so you can come up to New York and help me pick out the wedding dress."

  A month later she'd sent the ticket, but by then it had been too late. Gilly Debeau was hospitalized, heavily sedated with painkillers, struggling through the final stages of the liver cancer nobody'd even known she had.

  "Hey . . ." Colt Butler cupped her cheek, his hand warm and reassuring. "Are you all right? If it's the clock I—"

  "It's not the clock." Ann tucked her dark hair behind her left ear, a habit Rob was trying to break her of.

  Colt Butler took her arm, and before she could protest she was sitting beside him on a bar stool at the soda fountain.

  "Two of your banana split specials, Marge," he said.

  "That's very thoughtful of you." Ann didn't even tell him she'd just had a strawberry ice cream. What the heck? She'd skip supper. Not that there was anything in the cabinets to cook. She'd spent the days prior to Aunt Gilly's death at the hospital, and the days since the funeral organizing her aunt's possessions and trying to decide what to do about the house. Eating was secondary.

  "How did you know I love ice cream?" She plowed into the banana split with gusto.

  "I have this special radar. It hones in on fat gram counters a mile away. I always head in the opposite direction." Suddenly he leaned over and wiped the corner of her mouth with the tip of his index finger. Her toes curled under again.

  "Berry juice," he said. "It looked so good I started to lick it off."

  "Shocking. And you don't even know my name."

  Was that her laughing with such reckless abandon, as if she didn't have a care in the world, as if she didn't have the world's most wonderful man waiting for her in Brooklyn, as if Colt Butler didn't still have her Felix the Cat clock?

  "What is your name?"

  "Ann Debeau. Charlotte Ann, actually, named for my grandmother, only nobody ever calls me that except when I come back home to the South."

  He studied her a long time, but never once during his intense scrutiny did she feel uncomfortable. And that surprised her almost as much as her toes curling under. She'd always guarded her privacy as much as she'd guarded her time. And yet here she was, telling this strange man things she'd never even told Rob.

  "The name suits you." He nodded, adding his stamp of approval, then kissed her hand in the courtly manner of a long-ago era. "I'm pleased to meet you, Annie Debeau."

  Annie. Something stirred inside her, as soft as the brush of angel wings. Nobody had ever called her Annie, and yet the name felt as familiar to her as if she awakened every day to the sound of it on her lover's lips.

  "I might reciprocate except that you stole my clock right out from under my nose."

  "This sassy little thing?" The clock's tail never missed a beat as Colt set it on the counter.

  "You were eavesdropping."

  "No. I was right behind you, thinking the same thing myself. Only not about the clock."

  With any other man she would have taken offense, but Colt had a warm, easy manner that allowed him to pass off outrageous remarks as refreshing honesty.

  "You probably say that to all the girls."

  "Probably," he agreed, laughing to himself.

  Later she would mull over the encounter bit by bit, as she always did, and be mortified at her own behavior, but the heat and the banana split, combined with Colt Butler’s natural charm, put her in a mellow mood. He could suggest they swim naked in the moonlight, and she doubted she'd blink twice.

  "So you're at Windchime House?" he added.

  "How did you know?"

  "The name. Your grandmother's house is a familiar landmark around here. Beautiful and strangely haunting in a way I can't describe."

  "Exactly." She was amazed that he'd seen beyond the beauty.

  "Do you ever swim naked in the bay?"

  She nearly dropped her spoon. "In the moonlight?"

  "Yes." It was his turn to be flustered.

  "Do you read minds?" she asked.

  "No. I barely have time to read newspapers." Under the guise of savoring his cherries and whipped cream, he studied her. "You were thinking the same thing?"

  "I don't want you to get the wrong idea."

  "Neither do I. I've been called a rake and a Southern-fried Romeo, but I've never been called a cad." He lifted her hand and twisted the ring on her finger. "The first thing you told me was that you'd made a pledge, and I respect that." His grin was wicked. "I don't like it, but I respect it."

  Why was it, the simplest little thing he said could make her hot all over? What she needed was a good dose of Rob. His practical manner was the perfect counterbalance for her unconventional, unpredictable nature, the perfect antidote for the outrageous man sitting beside her.

  "Thanks for the ice cream, Colt. I have to run. I have a million things to do."

  "You didn't finish."

  She gazed with longing at her dish. Laughing, Colt scooped up the whipped cream and cherries, and held the spoon to her mouth. How could she resist?

  "You always save the best for last," he said.

  "How did you know?" He offered another bite, and she took it.

  "I do, too." He scraped the last bite from her bowl, then cupped her chin while she ate.

  She closed her eyes in sheer appreciation of the moment—the ice cream, the ceiling fans stirring the balmy air, the tender touch of a man's hand on her skin.

  "Hmmm . . . the last bite is always the best"

  Suddenly she felt another touch, on her lips this time, whisper-soft, gentle as dew falling on roses. Colt's lips on hers.

  It was a brief kiss, so brief that when she opened her eyes she thought she might have dreamed it. Except for the gleam in his eyes.

  "So it is," he murmured.

  She jumped off the stool. "I have to be going."

  "I know. You have a million things to do."

  His smile caught her hard up under her rib cage, and for a moment she thought she might faint. Unable to take her eyes off him, she angled sideways toward the door muttering, "Pardon me," more times than she could count as she bumped into hapless bystanders and stepped on toes.

  She was as confused as Alice in Wonderland. Swinging open the door, she gulped deep breaths of fresh air.

  "You forgot something."

  His voice was all too familiar. Familiar, too, was the floating sensation she felt from something as simple as the sound of his voice.

  "You forgot this."

  There was the clock in all its forties splendor, tail merrily wagging, eyes r
olling as if Felix the Cat knew things nobody else knew.

  "But I didn't forget it. It's yours. You got to it first"

  "No. You were there first." He pressed the clock into her hands. "I want to buy it for you."

  "Here." She reached into her purse. "How much—?"

  He stilled her with a firm grip over her hand. "My gift to you, Annie Debeau. To mark the time until we meet again."

  Before she could protest he strolled over to the cashier, turning only long enough for a wink and a smile.

  o0o

  Felix the Cat sat on the mantel, looking as out of place in Windchime House as a thorn on a morning glory.

  "Rob?" Curled into a ball on the Victorian love seat, Ann cradled the receiver close.

  "Honey?" The static on the line made him sound as if he were on another planet. And that's exactly how Ann felt, as if Rob were on Jupiter and she'd been abandoned somewhere between the moon and Venus. "What's wrong?"

  "Does something have to be wrong for me to call you?"

  "No. But we usually call each other in the evening, so the question stands."

  "Nothing." Certainly nothing she could tell him.

  "Is there something on your mind, Ann?"

  Where was that rush of relief she'd expected to feel when she called him? Where was the lifting of the spirits, the music in the heart?

  It had been too long since she'd seen him: That was all.

  "Rob, did I ever tell you I was born the day my grandmother died?"

  "No."

  "You don't sound very interested."

  "Now, Ann, don't get your dander up. I know it's been rough down there these last few weeks, but, honey, it's the middle of the afternoon."

  Why was it that everything he said irritated her?

  "Well, don't let me keep you from your clients."

  "I am on a tight schedule today—contracts to get out, Charlie Battingham breathing down my neck, getting ready for court tomorrow, plus the usual mountain of paper on my desk. It's hell around here."

  "It's pretty hot down here too."