Where Dreams Books 1-3

by M. L. Buchman

“No.” She shook her head to clear it. “No. I wasn’t going there.”

  He kept looking at her for a long moment with an intensity that was almost scary. Maybe Jo was right and she wasn’t wholly safe this close to him. But was that his doing or hers? She shook her head and he eased back without moving away.

  “Okay,” he slouched back against the rail. “As long as we have that clear. I assume you’ve told her all about me.” There was a touch of chagrin in his voice.

  He clearly had a very good idea of exactly what she’d said.

  “So, she’ll know my name. You’ll need to introduce me, and I’ll need to make her pay.”

  “But she—”

  He held up a hand to stop her.

  “It’ll be something she can afford. Maybe even barter, though I don’t have much need for women’s clothes. You can pay my real fees.”

  Cassidy swallowed hard. She was well off, but how much was a New York professional worth? Especially one of Russell’s caliber?

  “I don’t know if I can afford you either.”

  He shrugged easily, “I’m not sure what it will be, but money has little value to me. Deal?” He smiled for a moment, but didn’t do the expected rake of his eyes down her body. So, sex wasn’t the deal either. Something else. Something he wouldn’t want to do. Certainly not judging a wine contest.

  “I think I’d rather pay.”

  He stayed serious a moment longer then burst out laughing. So hard that she started to smile despite herself. He turned back to watch the boats still chuckling under his breath.

  They’d finally straightened out the big cruiser, much the worse for the wear, and were filling in the lock with sailboats.

  “You’re a tough lady, it’s hard to make you squirm. Don’t even know why I enjoy doing that to you, but I seem to. Hell, your friend, I’d probably help her out just for the fun of it. But I just thought up something better.”

  “Better?” her voice cracked, her throat was so dry.

  This time he did look her up and down. His grin was wicked.

  “You’re going to hate it.”

  New Dungeness Lighthouse

  Dungeness Spit

  First lit: 1857

  Automated: 1994

  48.18174 -123.10962

  The New Dungeness lighthouse was one of the first built in Puget Sound. It stands at the very end of a sand spit that sticks five miles out into the treacherous Straits of San Juan de Fuca.

  Also known as Shipwreck Spit, the narrow bit of land had a long history as a battleground between the various local tribes. Once established, the light often guided warring tribes to its base for their bloody battles. Though the lightkeepers were never harmed, they were often living in a lighthouse surrounded by corpses.

  JUNE 1

  It was a five-mile walk out Dungeness Spit to the lighthouse. There wasn’t much of a view, a chilly fog limited Cassidy’s sightlines to a few hundred feet, but there was plenty to see. Thousands of birds joined her for her walk along the nature sanctuary: gulls fishing close ashore, cormorants standing out on logs with their wings spread to dry, and grebes diving deep whenever she drew too close. Even a couple of seals followed her, looking like dogs paddling happily through the waves until the moment they dove in a sinuous roll.

  Her favorite were the sandpipers racing up and down the beach following the leading edge of the lazy waves, occasionally pecking at the sand. She couldn’t see what they caught, but they intently followed each wave down the long beach, then raced madly back to keep their feet dry. They always made her laugh.

  The GPS showed her making steady progress toward the lighthouse despite being in the dense, unrevealing fog. An endless loop of land rolled through the bubble of visibility around her. She moved her feet, but it felt as if she and the fog never moved. The land slid into her fog bubble from some unknowable place ahead and disappeared behind taking its wildlife with it. Her hair was soaked by the cool moisture, she’d let it down to keep her neck warm. If not for the parka and the red watchcap she’d be freezing despite the calendar insisting it was June.

  The GPS claimed the lighthouse was only two hundred and fifty-four feet away when the fog ended like a curtain. The sunlight glittered off the white lighthouse so that it shone incandescent against the blue sky. The little outbuildings were clustered about its base including an oversized Cape Cod cottage in the now-predictable U.S. Coast Guard paint job of white with a red roof. The actual lighthouse jumped out of the cottage’s midsection like a giant spear shot down from the heavens. The seagulls, who had stayed low and flew little in the fog, were soaring about the sunlit sky.

  The old Indian battleground was now a pleasant park surrounded on all sides by the ocean and populated by thousands of birds. A bald eagle swooped low out of the fog, pulled up sharply, and cried in surprise at finding a human in its hunting ground. It passed barely a dozen feet away as she ducked—she’d forgotten how huge they were up close.

  Cassidy checked quickly before the fog moved in, no sailboat. At least not yet. She had a feeling it would be back this month, not that she could possibly know. Whether it showed up or not, she was going to enjoy the day.

  The volunteer keepers at the lighthouse were thrilled to have a guest, the fog had kept away the usual June crowds. But she’d had a date to keep with her father and, like him, possessed a bit more stubbornness than common sense.

  They showed her both upstairs and down of the lighthouse and the cozy buildings. The Coast Guard had stopped staffing it in 1994. A local group had taken over management of the buildings and rented it out to people willing to spend a week at the far end of a five-mile spit of land. It sounded like heaven to her: a stack of books, a few interesting wines, and no city craziness. She could go for runs on the beach. She promised to keep it in mind. Maybe in the winter months when few would venture out here and she’d truly have it to herself.

  She turned down the keepers’ invitation to join them for lunch. It was awkward, but she’d wanted a little picnic by herself at one of the scattered picnic tables. She set up a meal of a small container of Asian noodle salad, half a roast beef sandwich smeared with fat-free mayonnaise and just a touch of Dijon mustard, a small bottle of Pellegrino Limonata, and a humungous chocolate chip cookie. Perfect.

  The air was still cool, especially now that she’d stopped moving and the ocean lay only a few hundred feet away all around her. She kept her parka on, though unzipped, as she ate. Several large ships moved along the Straits, slipping quickly and silently along the sparkling water.

  As she nibbled on the cookie, she pulled out her father’s letter and spread it before her.

  Dearest Ice Sweet,

  I’m sure now that I will never walk to any lighthouses with you. I probably won’t live to hear your adventure to the first one. For that, I am truly sorry.

  Regret is a funny thing. I’m lying here dying and I regret having so few years with your mother. I regret how little you knew her or her parents, truly kind people who welcomed me in when I had nothing. Yet I do not regret selling my vineyard to Mondavi.

  Cassidy closed her eyes. Pretty much the most respected vintner of the Napa and Sonoma valleys. She’d walked their vineyards on the wine tours. Admired the rolling hills and drunk in the dry smell of grass and oak. The earth there was so rich and built in layers so deep that even the oldest and hardiest of vines could not plumb their depths.

  She’d been allowed to walk more of their fields than the average tourist because of her background. She’d even spent a long leisurely afternoon with their horticulturist.

  Oh god. She gazed out at the water but instead saw the rolling Napa hills. She might have walked across her father’s own soil, strolled where he had poured so much blood and sweat and dreams—and never known.

  My future lay in the rugged soils of the Kitsap Peninsula, tending vines that grew so slowly and a
daughter who grew so fast. I missed my chance with the wine, which I don’t regret. I am thankful every day that I didn’t miss with my daughter. Adrianne taught me what was important, and watching you launch yourself against the world was definitely the best part of that.

  I loved you then, Ice Sweet, the best I knew how. So, don’t waste your time on regrets, for I take too many to my grave.

  Love you,

  Vic

  She lay her head down on her arms and tried to picture Victor Knowles. Not as the dying man with tubes running into his body and his eyes blurry with morphine. Nor as the bent man, old before his time with hard work.

  The father she remembered most clearly was sitting in his armchair, a book in his hand and his half-glasses sliding bit by bit toward the end of his nose, only to be pushed back at the last second before escape. A cup of tea, long since cold with forgetfulness, waiting on the small table at his elbow.

  She tried to picture Vic Knowles as the young-old man he’d once been. Young, new to his Napa vineyard, but old from Vietnam. Standing where he belonged among the California hills while filled with the hopes of a new season wrapped up in the vines. The first of June thirty years ago. Then the grapes would be small, tight, and dusty green—an entire cluster would fit easily in his cupped palm. His nerves, shattered from war would now be soothed by the new growth reaching down into the deep earth and seeking upward into the sky.

  To lose all that was impossible.

  She could hear in his letter the regret that he claimed not to have. It had been one of the greatest losses in his life. Last month he had described the heart-wrenching decision to stay with his failing vines or go and follow his wife to a land of failing soil. It would have been so easy for him to be angry at his wife for forcing the choice upon him. Just as easy as it would be for Cassidy to be angry at herself for bringing hardship to her mother and to the poor man who had given up so much.

  But he had chosen a different path.

  Cassidy looked at the lighthouse built on the old Indian battleground. The temporary keepers had told her of one particularly horrid slaughter where one tribe had slain every member of another. A single pregnant woman had crawled to the keeper’s residence riddled with twenty stab wounds. They had saved her from the return of the marauding band.

  What had she herself sacrificed?

  What had Russell said? She thought back to their one date for the hundredth time.

  “Always the critic. Always a step back. A step away. You know all of these wines, but do you really know the true heart of any of them?”

  The words were burned into her memory and that couldn’t have happened if there wasn’t some truth there. Her father had known every square foot of his land, even how the light lay upon it at every time of day. He had cherished the vines as if they were Cassidy’s brothers and sisters—a part of the family.

  Russell had been right. Damn him! She didn’t know the true heart of any one wine. Never mind a whole vineyard.

  She raised her head to prop her chin on her forearms and opened her eyes.

  And there it was.

  Her sailboat!

  Sliding up from Puget Sound, her burgundy sails looking like cutouts of magnificent triangles against the crystalline waters and the far off Canadian shore.

  Letter shoved into pocket, lunch trash crammed into her daypack—Cassidy sprinted to the far side of the lighthouse, near the fog’s edge, to get the boat and lighthouse in the same picture. It took forever to emerge from the other side. She was about to go back, see if she was mistaken, when the boat slid clear of the lighthouse just a few hundred yards out.

  A couple of quick shots, then she exchanged the camera for the binoculars she’d purchased for just for this moment. “Compact,” “high-power,” “light-weight,” and “weather-resistant” had combined properly at the REI counter. She quickly slid them free and focused on the sailboat.

  The boat’s bow slipped through the low waves as if they were clouds and air, like a special effect. It was unreal how smoothly it moved and how tidy it looked.

  The rich blue of the hull, the dark red of the sails, and the cheerful yellow and white of the decking and the cabin really were picture perfect. She tracked the view toward the back until she saw the skipper.

  One man. Bent down and pulling on a line. Then he stood and faced the shore.

  She dropped the binoculars. Only the salesman’s insistence that she put the strap over her head every time saved them from the rocks and sand beneath her feet.

  Russell Morgan.

  He hadn’t mentioned he was a sailor. He certainly hadn’t mentioned he went to lighthouses regularly.

  But where had he been last month at Cape Flattery?

  Duh! Beside her. On foot rather than under sail.

  And he’d been looking for someone, someone he wouldn’t admit to.

  She grabbed the binoculars again.

  He was reaching down for something. His hand came back into view holding a camera with a long lens, a massive telephoto.

  He hadn’t seen her yet.

  Cassidy didn’t think.

  She turned and sprinted for the fog with the binoculars clutched in her fist. A wave of birds rose before her in a flurry.

  The fog was like a cool slap on her burning cheeks. She didn’t stop, but kept up the pace for nearly a mile until the pounding of the pack against her back and the desperate pant of her breathing ground her to a halt.

  She dropped onto the sandy beach, shedding the pack and the parka because she was burning up and covered in sweat despite the chill air. She flopped back on the coat and lay like one dead while her breath and her heart pounded.

  Cape Flattery. He could have sailed there as easily as he had to the New Dungeness lighthouse.

  But he’d come ashore.

  Which meant he’d come ashore looking for someone he’d only seen through his camera lens. And he’d been disappointed when he’d found…her, almost as disappointed as she’d been to be chased by him.

  “Hey you in the red coat!” That’s what he’d yelled. He’d seen a woman in a red coat. She looked down at the coat she sat on, a woman in a red parka.

  But Cape Flattery had been too warm. She’d worn her red leather coat. And he’d thought that she was, well, herself.

  Her cheeks warmed abruptly.

  She’d lied about not being…herself.

  This was beyond weird. Jo was going to laugh her ass off.

  And maybe that finally explained his week-long vigil outside of her apartment. He must have seen her going by in her red parka and was looking for her. Looking for her, but thoroughly convinced that whoever he was looking for wasn’t the evil, snooty Cassidy Knowles.

  A smile started tugging at one corner of her mouth. She fought it back, but the other side soon joined in.

  Oh brother, was Mr. Russell Morgan ever in for a shock.

  And she couldn’t wait to be the one to give it to him.

  # # #

  Had he seen her, or not?

  For a moment she’d been a spot of red just the other side of the lighthouse.

  He’d tied off the jib sheet as quickly as he could and grabbed for his camera. But by the time he had the tiller trapped between his knees and the camera aimed, the red coat was disappearing into the fog bank.

  He had snapped an image, but it was inconclusive—no more than a fading blur in the fog.

  There one moment and then gone the next.

  Twenty minutes. It took twenty minutes to anchor safely behind the spit of land, dowse the sails, lower his dinghy over the side, and get ashore.

  He was the only one there. There was no one at the picnic tables and no one wandering around the narrow end of Dungeness Spit.

  An elderly man and his wife came out of the house at the base of the lighthouse. For lack of any better option
s, he wandered over to them doing his best to look casual. But no matter how many times he checked over his shoulder, there was no Lady of the Lights.

  “Welcome to New Dungeness lighthouse, young man.”

  “Hi,” he shook their hands. “Did you see a woman in a red coat? A long, red coat?”

  They both took a step back. Good one, Russell.

  “She’s a…friend. A friend I was hoping to meet here.”

  The man was about to say something when his wife cut him off. “What is your friend’s name?”

  Shit!

  “I don’t know that.”

  The man’s face closed and they both backed away a bit farther.

  “Has there been…” They weren’t going to answer that. “I’m…” Crap!

  They must think I’m insane. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit!

  The man pulled his wife closer and squared his aging shoulders, ready to leap to his wife’s defense.

  Russell spread his hands to show they were empty.

  “I’m really not a nut.” The old man wasn’t buying it. “There’s this lady. She keeps showing up at lighthouses.”

  By the time he was done with his story, they invited him into the cottage. Betty served him tea from a porcelain teapot decorated with sailboats and sat him down in the decent but utilitarian couch in the whitewashed living room. Barney was retired Navy and they’d been high school sweethearts and still looked to be.

  Over a plate of oatmeal cookies, they admitted that a young woman had been there and indeed had worn a long, red coat.

  “Quite pretty,” had earned Barney a loving scowl from his wife. “Very friendly, though I don’t think she gave us her name.”

  Betty stared down into her tea for a long moment. “She did. But I didn’t hear it clearly. It was unusual and she was soft-spoken. Didn’t seem polite to ask again.”

  “Perhaps she signed the guest register.” Barney led him over to the leather-bound book laid open on the sloped table just inside the front door. The last entry was three days earlier: Betty and Barney’s arrival.

  “I’m sorry we’re of so little help.”