A Wish For Love

by Gina Wilkins

  He seems quite nice. He has a young son, Charles, who is only two years older than the twins. Charles is a very quiet little boy, but well-behaved. Esther tells me that Mr. Peavy is a good father

  Mr. Peavy asked several questions about the inn. I could tell it interested him, but he was also quite flatteringly attentive to me. He laughed at my jokes. Mr. Carpenter never did, not that I made that many when he was around. Thank goodness, he finally accepted the futility of his unwelcome pursuit and turned his attentions to Lydia Nesbitt. Her father’s general store appeals to him almost as greatly as my inn did. And wasn’t that an uncharitable thing for me to have said? Please forgive me for my pettiness, diary.

  Ian wasn’t very well behaved during Mr. Peavy’s visit, I’m afraid. His unruly behavior was very unlike him. I realize that he is jealous of my attention, but I do wish he would try a little harder to be polite. Esther says a strong-willed boy needs a man’s firm guidance. Perhaps she is right.

  Mr. Peavy has invited me to attend the Independence Day symphony concert with him. I told him I would give him an answer as the date drew nearer, though I know it was rude of me to put him off that way. I am tempted to accept Everyone tells me it is time to go on with my life. At least Mr. Peavy seems more likable than the others, though my heart does not beat faster when he smiles at me, the way it always did when dear James …

  Now I’ve blotched the page with my tears again. How foolish of me.

  I will always miss you, my darling James.

  AFTER HER middle-of-the-night visit, and the spell of restlessness that followed, Bailey slept later than usual Saturday morning. It was almost eleven by the time she’d showered and dressed for the day in a simple sweater and slacks.

  She glanced out the window and saw that the parking lot in front of the inn was nearly empty. The breakfast diners had already gone, and the lunch crowd had not yet arrived. She wasn’t hungry, so she settled for a cup of coffee. The small electric coffeemaker was the only cooking accessory she’d requested when she’d moved in.

  It was going to be another nice afternoon, though the weatherman had predicted rain for the evening. Glancing around the cottage over the rim of her coffee mug, she thought it might be a good day to do some furniture shopping. Dean had left a list of items he wanted her to locate for him, along with a budget. She’d spotted a few likely stores in Hot Springs the day before. Maybe Aunt Mae would like to go with her and check them out.

  She rinsed out her mug and headed outside, making sure she locked the cottage door behind her. She found it hard to believe she’d forgotten to lock it last night, but she doubted that Bran had a key, and there had been no sign that he’d broken in.

  She still didn’t quite know what to make of his unexpected visit. Though he’d claimed he wanted to ask about Anna, he’d spent little time talking about his sister.

  He confused her. And he fascinated her. She was more than a bit embarrassed to remember how prominently he’d appeared in her dreams. She’d actually awakened once murmuring his name.

  She was distracted from her thoughts of Bran when she noticed Cara and Casey sitting in the gazebo. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” Cara replied.

  “How’s school going, Casey?” Bailey asked.

  The little girl shrugged. “Fine, thank you,” she answered with what Bailey now recogruzed as her characteristic reticence.

  Looking more closely at the child, Bailey thought she seemed a little pale, and her blue eyes were shadowed. “Aren’t you feeling well, Casey?” she asked in concern.

  “Casey didn’t sleep well last night,” Cara explained. “She had a bad dream.”

  “It wasn’t a bad dream,” Casey insisted, sounding as though this discussion had been going on for a while. “I saw someone looking in our window. It was a man. I just didn’t want to wake you up and tell you.”

  “Apparently, she lay awake for a long time, worrying about what she thought she saw,” Cara told Bailey, her own expression deeply troubled.

  Bailey turned back to Casey. “You saw a man looking in your window?”

  Casey nodded emphatically. “He was big and dark and his hair was black. It was really late, when everyone was asleep.”

  “It must have been a bad dream,” Cara repeated, looking as though she wanted very much to believe her own reassurance.

  Bailey wasn’t so sure. Casey looked serious, and genuinely frightened. “What time was it when you saw the man, sweetie?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t see a clock. But it was after midnight.”

  Bailey bit her lip, wondering if she should mention that she’d had a late visitor, too. After all, Bran had been out after midnight. And he did fit Casey’s description of a tall, dark man. But he wouldn’t have been peering into the windows of the inn. Why would he?

  She couldn’t imagine that Bran was the type of man who’d creep around peering into windows for any reason. Maybe he’d simply been passing Casey’s room when she’d spotted him. That made sense—except that he wouldn’t have walked past the back of the inn on the way from the cottage to the parking lot. And it couldn’t have been anyone else, could it? Bailey was sure she’d finally gotten away from Larry, but…

  “Maybe you were dreaming, Casey,” she said gently. “Your mother’s probably right. As well-lit as this place is, it would be difficult for a trespasser to sneak around without someone seeing him.”

  She couldn’t help thinking that Bran had entered the cottage without being seen or heard by anyone but her, and he’d already been inside by the time she’d realized she wasn’t alone. If he had been a burglar or a rapist or a stalker…well, she didn’t even want to think about that.

  Casey didn’t look particularly comforted by Bailey’s words, but she nodded politely.

  “Cara, I’ve been looking for you. Elva told me she thought I’d find you out here.”

  Bailey turned in response to her aunt’s voice, finding Mae coming briskly down the walkway, wearing a jade and peacock blue pantsuit and an equally bright smile. “Good morning, Aunt Mae.”

  “Good morning, Bailey. Did you sleep well?”

  Bailey murmured an evasive reply.

  “Do you need me for something, Mrs. Harper?” Cara asked, gently reminding Mae of her opening words.

  “Oh, yes. You have a telephone call.”

  Cara’s eyelashes fluttered, the only sign of her reaction to the announcement. “Mark?”

  Mae nodded, her face carefully expressionless, though her eyes twinkled behind her glasses. “He says he wants to ask where you bought that scarf you were wearing the other night. He wants to get one like it for his sister’s birthday.”

  Cara sighed. “I suppose he’s holding for me.”

  “Yes. I told him you were here. You didn’t want me to take a message, did you?” Mae asked with poorly feigned innocence.

  Cara shook her head and rose, looking resigned. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “May I talk to him, too, Mommy?” Casey asked hopefully, tagging along at her mother’s side. “I want to tell him I got an A on my book report yesterday. He said he wanted me to let him know how I did.”

  “You may tell him,” Cara murmured. “But, Casey— there’s no need to mention your bad dream, is there?”

  Casey nodded somberly. “I’ll just tell him about my book report.”

  Bailey and Mae both watched mother and daughter walk away.

  Mae exhaled lightly. “Poor Mark. He just won’t give up. The scarf was only an excuse, of course. And not a very good one, at that. He’s done better.”

  “He’ll ask her out again?”

  “Yes. And she’ll turn him down again. I swear, I don’t know which of them to feel sorrier for.”

  “I don’t know why one of them doesn’t put an end to this. If Cara isn’t interested, she should tell him once and for all to stop asking her out. And you’d think Mark would finally give her an ultimatum or something. I wouldn’t have any patience with all thes
e months of the same old routine.”

  Mae chuckled. “No, you wouldn’t. But then, you’ve always been one to tackle problems head-on, Bailey. You got that from me, I guess.”

  Bailey winced, thinking of how cowardly she’d been about even acknowledging her own problems recently, much less doing anything to solve them. “Er, Aunt Mae—”

  Her aunt’s attention had already moved on to something else. “I need to run into town this afternoon to have my blood-pressure medicine refilled. Would you like to go with me, dear? We could have lunch at the diner. The food’s only passable, but I thought it would be a nice break from eating here three times a day.”

  “Sure. I was going to ask if you wanted to come shopping with me this afternoon, anyway. I told Dean I would look for some tables for the cottage as well as a few other pieces for the inn. The place really does need some accent pieces.”

  “That sounds like fun. When can you be ready?”

  “I just have to get my purse.”

  “Me, too. Meet you in fifteen minutes?”

  Bailey nodded and hurried back to the cottage, digging in her pocket for the key. She was about to step inside when she thought she saw a movement from the corner of her eye.

  She looked toward the edge of the grounds, which were surrounded by thick woods that blocked the view of the nearest neighbors, over a quarter of a mile down the road. An old caretaker’s shack—the scene of the nowlegendary Cameron-twin murders—had once stood at the very edge of the woods, but Dean had torn down the remains of the building a few months ago, leaving a fresh pile of dirt in its place.

  It was in that direction that she thought she’d seen someone moving around. But at second glance, she only saw trees, scraggly bushes and the posts for the privacy and security fence Dean was having constructed along the inn’s grounds.

  She shook her head and opened the cottage door, telling herself that she must have been more affected by the account of Casey’s bad dream than she’d realized. She seemed to be unusually jumpy these days. She felt as if her past was coming back to haunt her.

  THE MAN IN THE WOODS saw everything. He knew the schedules of everyone at the inn, their routines, their habits. He knew when they were together. And when they were alone.

  When she was alone.

  He waited.

  When the time was right, he’d know.

  And so would she.

  THE SMALL TOWN of Destiny, Arkansas, had changed since the first time Bailey had visited there with Dean a year ago. The new Destiny Library was the first thing she saw when she drove down the main street. Originally named the Charles Peavy Memorial Library when it opened in January, it had been renamed a few weeks later when Mark Winter had published an article proving that the late Charles Peavy had murdered the Cameron twins and at least two others in 1921.

  Mayor Charles Peavy Vandover, grandson of the murderous Charles, had borne up well under the scandal of the revelation, keeping his head high and proclaiming that he could not be held responsible for the nefarious actions of his ancestor. His cousins, Chief of Police Roy Peavy and State Representative Gaylon Peavy, had followed suit, claiming embarrassment about the story but maintaining their distance from their grandfather’s deeds.

  The murderer’s daughter, Margaret Peavy Vandover, once the reigning grande dame of Destiny, had all but gone into seclusion during the past months. Rumor had it that she was in poor health.

  The townspeople hadn’t turned on the Peavys, who had contributed a great deal to the community during the past seventy-five years. Few could claim that all their own ancestors had been models of propriety—and, as Dean ruefully pointed out, money and power still had a slight edge over old-fashioned concepts like honor and justice.

  The early interest in the story had waned when a lightning-ignited fire had burned down the old redbrick post office in the center of town, taking a couple of other old buildings with it and necessitating a major renovation of the downtown business section. A seventy-fiveyear-old scandal could hardly compete with the excitement of all the new insurance-financed construction going on in town.

  Bailey could see that Dean was slowly making a place for himself here. His inn had become a popular dining spot, and the tourists he’d drawn to the area were warmly welcomed by the local shop owners who’d been struggling to survive.

  Having the inn occupied again, after six years of its sitting empty, had gone a long way toward dispelling the old ghost rumors that Dean had found so disturbing when he’d first bought the inn. He’d told Bailey that he was content to let the legend fade into oblivion.

  At first, some of the locals had wanted to talk to Anna about the tragic fate of her distant cousins, and some had found it compelling that fate had brought another Cameron to live in the old place again, but neither Anna nor Dean had encouraged speculation about her suspiciously timed appearance. They seemed content to leave the past alone, and concentrate on the future.

  “Why do you suppose Dean and Anna are so evasive about how they met?” Bailey asked Mae over lunch in the no-frills Destiny Diner, where brightly colored Halloween cutouts served as the most prominent concession to decorating. “I’ve yet to hear a satisfactory explanation. First thing any of us knew, they were head over heels in love and engaged to be married.”

  An odd expression crossed Mae’s face. “I’m sure they have their reasons for keeping the details to themselves.”

  “Do you think it had anything to do with Anna’s family? Her brother, maybe?” Bailey asked, knowing she was coming precariously close to breaking her promise to Bran. But she couldn’t help herself. She was overwhelmingly curious about him.

  Mae choked on a sip of ice tea. She hastily raised a paper napkin to her lips. “Her brother?” she asked a moment later.

  Bailey nodded. “I overheard Anna talking about him,” she confessed. “She seemed very upset about him, as though they’d quarreled or had been separated against their will. Do you know what happened between them?”

  “No,” Mae replied without quite meeting Bailey’s eyes. “I can’t say that I do. I’m sure Anna would tell us if she wanted us to know,” she added with gentle reproval.

  Bailey sighed. “I know. I’m prying. But I can’t help wondering… oh, never mind.”

  “Why don’t we talk about you, dear? When are you going to tell me what happened in Chicago to upset you so?”

  Bailey winced She had come by her inquisitive nature honestly. Aunt Mae had raised her, after all. But she’d put this off for as long as she could. It was time to come clean.

  She drew a deep breath. “I called Quentin a pompous, pretentious fraud who wouldn’t know quality antiques from do-it-yourself furniture kits. I told him I was tired of covering for him, tired of working six teen-hour days seven days a week, tired of kissing up to his obnoxious clients and being treated in return like a lowly peasant. I said he could either start treating me with the respect I deserve or he could fire me.”

  “He fired you,” Mae said, and it wasn’t a question.

  Bailey nodded. “He fired me.”

  “Best thing that could have happened to you, if you ask me.”

  “You’re probably right. But it still stung. I worked hard for that man. For him to just throw me away like that…”

  “You deserve better, Bailey. And you’ll find it.”

  Bailey stirred her coffee, though she hadn’t put any milk or sugar m it. “I hope you’re right.”

  “I’m right. Now tell me about Larry.”

  Bailey groaned. “You’re determined to hear the whole ugly tale, aren’t you?”

  “How bad is it?”

  Bailey looked away. “Bad.”

  “Bailey…” Quick concern colored Mae’s voice.

  She shook her head. “It’s all right. I took care of it. I just…well, I thought I was a better judge of character than that.”

  “It’s not a flaw to want to believe the best of people, dear,” Mae said gently. “You just have to leam to be care
ful.”

  Bailey wondered what her aunt would say if she knew the whole truth about Larry—or about Bran. Bailey had hardly been careful where Bran was concerned, even when she’d found him inside her cottage without her permission. Obviously, he was a troubled man, a loner who couldn’t reach out even to his own sister. There was a lost, haunted look in his eyes that tugged at her, at the same time as something about him warned her to keep her distance.

  Without knowing anything about him—what he did, where he’d been, even where he was staying—Bailey had agreed to keep his presence a secret. She’d been alone with him on two occasions, and would probably be again, if he came back. She couldn’t turn him away, and not only because he was Anna’s brother. Somehow during the course of those two brief interludes with him, it had become more personal than that.

  She really was an idiot.

  “Bailey?” Mae sounded as though she’d spoken more than once without getting a response.

  Bailey blinked. “Sorry, Aunt Mae. I was just… thinking.”

  She tried to push thoughts of Bran to the back of her mind. She wouldn’t mention him yet, but she made herself a promise that she was going to be more careful from now on. Despite her abysmal record, she was determined to learn from her mistakes.

  Just then, a portly, pleasant-looking man with rather squinty brown eyes stopped by the table on his way past. “Hey, there, Miz Harper How’s everything out at the inn?”

  “Fine, thank you, Mr. Cooley. Have you met my niece?”

  The man smiled broadly at Bailey. “Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “Bailey, this is R. J. Cooley, Dean’s insurance agent. Mr. Cooley, Bailey is Dean’s sister.”

  “Real nice to meet you, ma’am,” Cooley said, enthusiastically pumping Bailey’s hand. “You visiting or are you moving to this area yourself?”

  “Just visiting for now.”

  “You should think about moving here, like your brother and your aunt. It’s a great place to live. My family’s been in these parts for a long time.”