A Summer Affair

by Susan Wiggs

  Isabel had left because he’d let her. Because he had not managed to convince her that the past didn’t matter. Because he was furious about her recklessness and lack of commitment. And finally, the true reason emerged. How could he possibly love her enough? How could his heart be big enough to love her the way she deserved? His heart, jaded and weary with living and loss and worry and suspicion, was ruined for someone like her. She was too hungry for the right kind of love, the kind untainted by tragedy. She deserved a man with a heart filled with gladness, not darkness.

  He remembered a conversation with his stepmother earlier in the summer. Love was not always convenient. At the time, he’d had no notion of what that meant. Now he understood it with a painful intensity. Sometimes love was hard. Still, it was the essence of life.

  Knowing Isabel had changed him forever, but the realization had come at the cost of her love. Perhaps.

  The old Blue Calhoun would have stepped aside, looked away, let the opportunity slip by. But he was a different man now.

  Forty-Three

  Soft chords from a ukelele shimmered across the open pavilion of the Grand Pacific Hotel of Honolulu. In the background, the cream-colored walls of the main building, an adobe made of coral, were painted pink by the setting sun. Clematis and passion flowers climbed the corner posts of the pavilion, framing a perfect view of the lush, waterfall-draped mountains cleaving down to the water.

  The tropical breeze held a wealth of scents—the sea and Plumeria from the hedge along the sandbank, roasting fish crackling over the fire pit, pineapple and melon punch that flowed endlessly for the well-heeled guests of the resort.

  A ship from the mainland had docked that afternoon, a huge paddle steamer with decks stacked like wedding cakes, balconies of iron lace, a towering pilot house and two jury masts. Hordes of native surfriders paddled out to welcome the guests. The islanders’ sleek brown bodies, prone upon lozenge-shaped waxed boards, flashed in the lowering sun. Some of the more daring riders stood upon their boards, gliding ahead of the lip of an incoming wave. Coral fishers and canoes bristling with outriggers plied a brisk trade in the harbor.

  Wagonloads of luggage jammed the roadway in front of the hotel. Native horsemen and horsewomen in leafy crowns jammed the roadway, offering wreaths of fresh flowers along with their services as sightseeing guides.

  Isabel walked across the scrubby grass to the edge of the beach, where gouged rocks and sand lay bleached by the sun and wind. A wild storm that morning had left a wrack line of weeds and flowers, like a torn lei along the shore. She lifted a spyglass to her eye, but she didn’t aim at the ship. Each evening at this time, people gathered to watch the migration of the whales past the magnificent promontory called Diamond Head. Their shadow-colored bodies were so huge that when they breached, it seemed like an act of defiance against nature.

  This whole magical archipelago was a fairyland, a place of dreams. Anything could happen here.

  Except nothing ever did.

  She had always longed to see whales, and now she could look at them any time she wished. She let the boom of the surf rage in her ears, drowning out the sweet music. Sometimes, if she lost herself deeply enough in the exotic new world she’d discovered, she could forget about the past for whole minutes at a time. But of course, memories and regrets always crept back into her heart.

  What was he doing right now? Was his cravat in need of straightening? Was he eating supper, treating a patient, saying good-night to his son? Did he still make that contented, sighing sound in his throat when he settled down to sleep?

  Isabel felt trapped in her own life. She couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back. There was only one place she wanted to be, and she was afraid to go there.

  “Will you be joining the other guests for supper, Missy kamaina?” asked Kai, the hotel’s native host, a thickly built man in white trousers and a colorful Garibaldi shirt. He called her kamaina because she had been a guest for so many weeks that they no longer considered her a foreigner.

  “I suppose I will,” she said. The hotel guests—a mélange of wealthy planters, whaling captains, naval officers and missionaries—made for pleasant enough company. But Isabel had not been able to recapture her old sense of fun. Superficial acquaintances, which used to amuse her so much, now failed to fill the void. In fact, sometimes their transient nature only made her feel more lonely than ever.

  With a courtly bow, he offered her a lei. The white blossoms matched the ones on her pau’, a dress she wore for riding. She dipped her head forward to accept the wreath. The powerful perfume encircled her.

  “Kai,” she said, “is one of the ships in port bound for San Francisco?”

  “Yes, Miss. The Columbia leaves in three days’ time.”

  Her heart drummed painfully with yearning. Three days. In just three short days, she could be on her way to San Francisco, to…what? She would never find out if she didn’t go. Her need outweighed her fear. “I should like to get a berth on it. Can you arrange that?”

  “Yes, Miss. But—”

  “What is it?” She felt giddy with impatience.

  “A gentleman has requested permission to escort you to supper.”

  “Oh, I don’t think—”

  “I only asked out of politeness,” said a voice she thought she’d never hear again, “but I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Perhaps it was the expression on her face that made Kai scurry away; perhaps it was her complete and utter shocked stillness. The spyglass dropped from her numb fingers.

  “What a shame it would have been,” he said, “if you took ship for San Francisco just as I arrived.” He stood beneath the trembling shadows of a banyan tree. Every inch of him was familiar to her—the bright bottle color of his eyes, the gorgeous shape of his mouth, the Viking-like height and breadth of him. Yet at the same time, he was wholly a stranger. He wore a loose shirt open at the throat, the sleeves pushed back. His hair had grown past his collar and his lean cheeks sported a day’s growth of beard. This was not the Blue Calhoun she saw in dreams. This was a hundred, a thousand times better.

  A baffling and shameful urge to weep filled her throat. Mortified, Isabel swallowed with painful effort. She managed somehow to force air into her lungs, to dampen her lips and find her voice. “Um, travel agrees with you.”

  “You always said it would. You were right.”

  She felt vulnerable, as though she might fall to pieces like one of the storm-shredded flowers that lay at her feet. Wrapping her arms protectively around her middle, she asked, “Lucas is well? And June Li and the others?”

  “Everyone’s fine. Lucas is a cadet at the United States Military Academy. Once I got over the shock, I realized how proud I am of him. My son and I did a lot of mending this summer.”

  “I’m glad,” she said. He loves you so much. She didn’t dare say so aloud, for she was afraid she might come apart.

  Blue took a step toward her. The setting sun at his back outlined him in exquisite detail. “Everyone misses you. Isabel—”

  She was afraid of what he might say, so she interrupted him. “So what of Dr. and Mrs. Vickery?”

  He hesitated, then latched on to the neutral topic. “The night you were shot, he’d gone down to supervise the distribution of an opium shipment—illegally, of course. He preferred his imports to be duty free. His wife was supposed to be on a train to Monterey, but she followed him. She suspected he’d be meeting his mistress.”

  “Clarice Hatcher.”

  He nodded. “Alma took his old Confederate pistol and went after them. She probably arrived a few minutes before Brolin, who had been watching Vickery and was about to close in on him. He was, like you, very much in the wrong place at the wrong time. Alma and her husband quarreled.”

  “And then she shot Mr. Brolin?”

  “There was a struggle for the gun. Clarice actually did the shooting. The only witness died under mysterious circumstances at Mercy Heights. Rory’s looking for proof that Vickery and Clarice
had something to do with it. Pisco and Punch admitted that Vickery paid them to…dispose of you.”

  “Good heavens. What’s to become of them all?”

  “Vickery will go to prison to serve a life sentence. His wife has been sent to a sanitarium in Calistoga. And Clarice goes on trial in three weeks. Rory tells me your testimony would be a powerful element in the proceedings.”

  Her heart sank. That explained it, then. That was why he’d crossed an ocean to find her. “So you intend to bring me back to testify?”

  “No,” he said quietly, taking a step toward her, stopping only inches away.

  His tone, his proximity made her heart speed up. “Then tell me why you’ve come.”

  He touched her chin, lifted her gaze to his. “I miss your coffee.”

  Ah, that touch, so gentle that it took her heart apart. She pulled away, turned to face the restless ocean. “I never go back to a place I’ve already been.”

  “If you keep running in the same direction, you’ll wind up back where you started from.”

  She could not believe how much this hurt. And how much hope was filling her up at the same time.

  “Why these islands?” he asked. “Why did you come here, Isabel?”

  “To find a place where the seasons never change.” The answer came from her on an unplanned wave of honesty.

  “A place you’ll never have to leave,” he said.

  She nodded helplessly. After all her travels, she sought the slumbrous sameness of endless summer. He circled his arms around her from behind, and she sank back against him.

  “Here is that place, Isabel,” he said. “Here, next to my heart, is the place you’ll never have to leave. In my bed, my life, wherever we go. It’s where we both belong.” He bent to nuzzle her neck, and heat sped through her.

  On fire, she turned to face him again. The blood thundered in her ears with the rhythm of the waves. He was a complete and devastating dream, and his words made her want to cry.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked.

  “You know everything about me—and you don’t despise me.”

  He smiled down at her. “I neither know all your secrets, nor do I despise you. You’re an endless mystery to me, Isabel. And that’s just one of the reasons I love you so much.” He spoke so matter-of-factly that she wasn’t certain she’d understood. He touched the fringed knot at the waist of her pau’. “Easily removed. I like it.”

  She was still reeling from his earlier comment. “How can you joke at a time like this?”

  “I’m not joking. I do like a dress that is easily removed.”

  “Not that, you huge fool. The other. The heartfelt declaration of love.”

  “Oh, it was that. Heartfelt. And a declaration.” His smile was positively rakish as he took out a slender golden ring set with a flashing diamond and slipped it on her finger.

  Dear heaven. Love was such a revelation to her. It had the power to destroy her, yet without it, life made no sense.

  “I…I feel as if I should make some sort of pledge or declaration to you, but I don’t know what you want. I don’t know if I’m able….” She studied the facets of the diamond as she fumbled for the words. “I know I’m useless when it comes to being in love, but I’ll do the best I can.”

  He brushed her lips with his. “I think we can probably muddle through.”

  Her chin trembled and she started to pull away, but he stopped her. “Isabel, I’ll travel to the ends of the earth to be with you. If this is the life you wish for, then I shall make it my life as well. I swear my love for you will never change except to grow stronger with each passing day. You have to trust me, Isabel. Trust me as I never dared to trust you until it was nearly too late.”

  She struggled to smile through a veil of tears. “It’s not too late, my love. It’s not.”

  Dear Reader,

  In the latter half of the nineteenth century, drug addiction was widespread and often afflicted upper-class women, who ingested it in patent medicines loaded with opium, frequently under doctor’s orders. Many physicians routinely injected their patients with morphine. The Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 finally exerted serious control over the opium and cocaine trade.

  Also in the late nineteenth century, crime investigators recognized that rifling was of value for identifying a fired projectile with a particular firearm. However, it was not until the early twentieth century that such findings were permitted in court in the United States.

  There’s nothing illegal going on in my next book, but the drama never stops in The Ocean Between Us, a contemporary novel of a U.S. Navy family struggling with honor, loyalty and love. They say the toughest job in the Navy is that of the Navy wife. Grace Bennett is living proof of that when a shocking mishap aboard an aircraft carrier brings her face-to-face with a marriage at risk and the dreams she set aside long ago. It’s a story of heartbreak, healing and hope, coming in April 2004 from MIRA Books.

  Until then, happy reading,

  Susan Wiggs

  www.susanwiggs.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-5389-0

  A SUMMER AFFAIR

  Copyright © 2003 by Susan Wiggs.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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