by Hinze, Vicki
“You’ll need more evidence to convince me, Counselor. So far, all I see is a single father doing the best he can and stumbling now and then, as all humans do.”
“Evidence?” He swallowed hard. “No problem. How does getting caught red-handed at setting the stove timer back five minutes by a three-year-old suit you?”
“I’m not sure. Why is it significant?”
“We have quiet time. Thirty minutes of silence. Bliss. Every afternoon from three until three-thirty. It’d been a really rough day, and at three twenty-eight I just wasn’t ready for another round. I eased back the timer five minutes.”
“And Jeremy caught you?”
“Yes.” Bryce dipped his forehead to hers. “Suzie had been teaching him numbers and he knew eight was bigger than three. I felt like a jerk.”
“I think needing that five minutes was pretty human, too.” She shrugged. “Why didn’t you just tell the kids you needed another five minutes?”
He blinked, then blinked again. “I never thought of it.”
“After getting caught, I bet you will next time.”
“No doubt about it.” He grunted. “But you can see, I’m not the greatest parent. The kids need Mrs. Wiggins. She’s stable and—”
“As flexible as a brick wall. Honestly, Bryce, you love the kids and they love you. That’s what matters. Mistakes happen.”
“But my mistakes have Suzie on an analyst’s couch once a week and having nightmares every night. There are consequences.”
“Your pride really is strutting its stuff here, Counselor. Why are you so sure it’s your mistakes that are causing this with Suzie?”
“What else could it be?”
“Grief. Loneliness. Longing for a mother. It could be a million things that have nothing to do with you.”
“I appreciate your support, Cally, but I know in my gut I’m responsible. Whatever the reason, seeing to it that my daughter is emotionally healthy is my job. I’m flunking on a grand scale, and she’s paying the price.”
Cally hugged him, pressed her body against his, then held him for the longest time. His heart thumped against hers, and she rested her cheek on his shoulder. “Be gentle with you, Bryce,” she whispered, then backed away.
Tears shimmered in her eyes. Tears for him. Bryce swallowed hard. “You should have had a lot of kids.”
How she wished that she could’ve. “Gregory never came around, or I would have.” She smiled but there was no humor in it. “The only thing my mentioning adoption ever got me was more time alone.” Had that been when Gregory had started his affair with Joleen?
“Why do women so often talk in riddles?”
“Sorry.” She tucked her hair behind her shoulder. “If I brought the subject of adoption up, then Gregory would punish me by staying at the hospital overnight. Near the time we formally separated, it was unusual for him to spend more than a night a week at home.”
Bryce looked stricken, and maybe a little angry, too. “I’m sorry, Cally.”
She loved him for that anger. “I should’ve left him long before I did. Things weren’t right. I knew it. Then they got worse. But by then I believed I didn’t deserve better. And I was so afraid of failing out on my own.”
“And maybe concerned at what your family would think, and your friends.”
Her pride had been stomped to death a long time ago. She let out a self-deprecating laugh. “For the last couple years, the only pride I’ve had has come out of a perfume bottle. I’m into symbols. There’s a flower that symbolizes pride, so I wear perfume made from it.” She shrugged. “I figure everyone ought to have a little, and we get what we need where we find it.”
“I wish I knew what to say.” He wished he hadn’t understood what she’d meant.
“You don’t have to say anything.” She tossed down the stone then swiped her hand against her thigh, brushing off the grains of sand. They pattered on the spill of leaves blanketing the ground, and the memory of that final heated argument with Gregory nagged at her. It’d been wicked.
She went quiet, buried the memory and the anger of it, too. When she thought she had her emotions under control, she added, “I accepted his sterility, Bryce. I truly didn’t hold it against him, or stop loving him because of it. I can feel good about me for that.”
His hand on her cheek, he tilted her face to look at her, eye to eye. “You can feel good about you for a lot of reasons.”
Her eyes burned. It was the wind. Definitely the wind, and not Bryce’s words or the tender look in his eyes. Her chin trembled. “You’re a very kind man.”
“Not really. Really I’m ruthless—unless…”
“Unless?”
He gave her a charming smile, let his fingertips steal over her lower lip. “Unless you only kiss admittedly ruthless but kind men.” He dropped his voice to just above a whisper. “Do you?”
She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. “I don’t know. The situation’s never come up.”
“It has now.” He let his thumb slide over her cheek, follow the rim of her jaw from chin to ear. “Could you check?”
Oh, God. “I, um, guess it would depend on why this admittedly ruthless but kind man wanted to kiss me.”
His voice went husky. “What if he said he hasn’t really kissed a woman since his wife died, and he’s curious to see if kissing is like riding a bike?”
“Sounds awfully experimental and one-sided to me.”
“Or he could say you have the most tempting mouth he’s seen in a long time, and if he doesn’t kiss it soon, he thinks he might die.”
“Serious stuff.” He wasn’t smiling anymore, and neither was she. “But I’m afraid I’ve sworn off serious stuff. Bad for a body’s emotional health.”
“Or he could say he’s lonely, Cally.” Bryce clasped her upper arms, curled his fingertips in the sleeves of her sweater. “He’s so . . . damn lonely. And just for a minute he’d like not to feel lonely anymore.”
An echoing chord thrummed deep inside her. She knew loneliness. God, but did she know it. Hate it. Resent it. Fear it.
If only one has the courage to believe, miracles can happen beside a dreamswept sea.
Suzie’s words, her message, flitted through Cally’s mind. But why now? Courage to believe? A potential miracle? Cally squeezed her eyes shut, trembling with more fear than she’d felt the day Gregory announced he was divorcing her. She’d given him everything, ended up with nothing. What more did she have to lose?
The spark. She was the sunshine of our home. That flicker of a spark.
Courage. Courage. Miracles.
She opened her eyes, looked straight into Bryce’s. “Under those conditions, I’d have to say he’d better kiss me, then. I wouldn’t want a kind man’s missing a momentary respite from loneliness on my conscience—whether or not he’s admittedly ruthless. And especially not a man responsible for three beautiful kids.”
Had she lost her mind? Recant! Recant!
She wanted to, but couldn’t. Her insides had gone molten, yet her pride insisted she do something. “But I’d also have to say that he could kiss me only once.”
“Only once?” He released her left arm, cupped her nape under the fall of her hair.
She nodded, trembling inside. Grateful she was already sitting for fear her legs wouldn’t support her. “I loved one man totally and completely. He broke my heart.”
“And you don’t want your heart broken again.” Bryce dragged his thumb from the soft hollow behind her ear, down her nape.
She shivered in response. “No, I don’t. Not now. Not ever again.”
“Ruthless but kind loved a woman, too, Cally. Totally and completely, with all his heart.”
“And she died.”
“Yes.” He swallowed hard. “She died.”
“I’m sorry.” Simple words, but ones carrying a wealth of feeling. He’d loved Meriam deeply, as much as Cally once had loved Gregory. At least Meriam had loved Bryce back. And yet, both he and Cally had ended up alo
ne.
Now both of them were lonely.
Sharing this pain, Cally lifted her hands, then wrapped them around his neck.
He scooted through the grass and sand, closer. “If we’re only going to do this once, I want to do it right.” Circling her back with his left hand, he rested his right one on her sweater at her ribs.
The warmth from his palm seeped through her clothes and heated her skin. Her heart thumped a staccato beat, pounding out waves of uncertainty. Gregory had stopped making love to her. Had stopped finding her physically attractive long before their final separation. She’d grown repugnant to him. And, even for a respite from loneliness, she didn’t think she could bear to see that indifference then distaste for her in the eyes of a gentle man like Bryce Richards. “Wait!”
“I can’t, Cally.” He dipped his chin. “I would if I could, but I . . . can’t.” He pressed his lips to hers.
Cally stiffened. She couldn’t do it. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. He’d turn away, and she’d feel as vulnerable and undesirable and as ugly as she’d felt before. God, but she hated feeling ugly. She hated feeling any of those things. She hated . . . feeling. Feeling brought pain. And responsibility for pain. That responsibility had to be denied or accepted, and either choice brought more pain. Agony. Despair.
“Kiss me, Cally,” Bryce whispered against her lips. He pulled her closer into the warmth of his arms. “Please.”
The longing in his voice conspired with the longing inside her and she pressed her mouth to his. Lips parting, he gently invaded her mouth, brushing their tongues. Her breath caught, his heart beat hard against her breasts and, certain she’d later regret this, she couldn’t resist the lure of being held by a man who wanted nothing more than to hold her, to touch her, to share with her a tender moment and a gentle kiss. She couldn’t resist him any more than she’d been able to resist making that turn onto Sea Haven Highway. Letting the sensations come, she welcomed the joy in the moment. Felt it seep past her fears, deep inside, and she prayed that, if only for this moment, that joy would rinse the hurt from her heart.
Hattie looked through the mullioned windows at the end of the hallway, out onto the cliffs. Cally and Bryce had walked first toward the village, then back toward the inn. When they’d walked past the driveway leading up to the inn, she’d smiled. Now, looking at Bryce holding Cally in his arms, kissing her, Hattie felt her heart ready to burst. “Oh, Tony.” She snagged her lace-edged hankie from her pocket, then dabbed at her eyes. “Isn’t it just the most wonderful thing? They’ve chosen our tree. Of all the places . . . our tree.”
A sourceless breeze whisked over her skin.
“I know, darling,” Hattie said, then delicately sniffed. “Our dear hearts have a long way to go. But all their outings with the children, their sitting in the hallway talking in the dark, and now this lovely gentle kiss at our special place . . . Well, you must agree, those are fine bits of progress.” She let her gaze drift from the ceiling back out the window.
Hand in hand, Bryce and Cally were returning to the house, and Hattie’s memories drifted back to the days when she and her beloved Tony had walked that same way on those same cliffs. They had so enjoyed their quiet walks. Her chest went tight. “Oh, how I miss you, love.”
Lyssie cried.
Hattie sniffed and gave her eyes a final swipe with her lacy hankie, then stuffed it back into her dress pocket. “I know, I know. We’re needed and fulfilled in helping others. But, God forgive me, just once in a blue moon, I can’t help but wish we could help us.”
The phantom breeze formed a distinct sentence. “Me, too.”
Hattie came to a dead halt. “Tony?” Outside the Great White Room, she frowned at the ceiling, then up the stairwell leading to the attic, toward Tony’s old room. In all their years in this house, she’d intuitively known he was close. He’d given her sign upon sign. But never before had she actually heard him. Not aloud. Not directly. And never with words.
Never, until now.
It had to be a warning. Gooseflesh peppered her arms. Something about these special guests was different from any of the others who’d come here in the past five decades. Something that mattered to them and to her and Tony. Something that could affect them continuing to be together at Seascape Inn.
She could lose him.
He could not be here with her anymore.
The gravity of the truth pulsed through her, weighed down on her like a ton of granite, and frightened in a way she’d never before been frightened, she glared up the stairs. “I won’t have it. I just won’t have it. You made a vow to me, Anthony Freeport,” she reminded him, her heart thundering inside her head. “I’ve dreamed it a thousand times, and I know it happened. When you were dying on that battlefield, you promised me we’d never be apart. Don’t you dare tell me fifty years later you’re going to break your word to me. Don’t you dare!”
The wind didn’t answer.
Neither did Tony.
Chapter 6
Bryce had suspected it.
He’d hoped he’d been wrong, prayed he’d been wrong, but feared he’d been right. Now he knew he had been, and he resented the hell out of it.
Gregory Tate had abused Cally. Maybe he hadn’t physically hurt her, but he had severely damaged her tender heart and the woman she was inside. Emotional abuse was still abuse, and that the bastard had done it to such a gentle, loving soul as Cally infuriated Bryce. That Tate had done it, Bryce suspected, to assuage his own guilt at having an affair with Joleen, deepened Bryce’s fury to a cold rage. It made him sick. And, because it was a commonality between him and Gregory Tate, it made Bryce ashamed to be a man.
He and Cally had returned to the house shortly after that powerhouse of a kiss. More than the coming together for a moment’s respite, that fusion and connection of spirits had rocked him down to his toes. Miss Hattie, looking weary in a way he’d never seen her, vowed she wasn’t sick, was never sick, and had gone up to bed. Now the kids slept peacefully, the battleaxe, whose nights were her own, had retired to her room in the Carriage House, and Bryce and Cally stood outside her bedroom door.
She plucked a blade of dead grass off his sleeve. “Are you going to listen for Suzie?”
He nodded. “I’m hoping she won’t dream.” Hoping? Masterful understatement. Praying. Pleading. Begging. “When she does, it really rattles her. I need to be there.”
Understanding passed through Cally’s eyes. “I could keep you company for a while, if you like.”
She wanted to be with him? His heart skipped a little beat. “I’d like that a lot.”
“Let me grab a pillow.” She smiled. “The floor’s hard.”
Didn’t he know it. He’d been stiff for an hour again this morning.
She ducked into her room, then came back with two pillows, a hairbrush, and an afghan—the one he’d awakened and found covering him a few mornings ago. If she’d been at the inn then, he would’ve thought maybe she’d covered him. But she hadn’t been. And she’d ditched her sweater that matched his, and her shoes. He smiled at her bare feet.
She wiggled her toes. “I figured we might as well be comfortable.”
“Good thinking.” He moved aside, so she could pass him in the hallway. She skirted around, and he again caught a whiff of her perfume. It wasn’t sickly sweet like so many perfumes. Cally’s Pride in a Bottle smelled fresh and clean, subtle yet quietly erotic. Did they make a masculine version? Sell it in gallons?
She stopped midway between his room and Suzie’s, then sat down on the floor. “You have me at a disadvantage.” She braced a pillow behind her back.
He leaned Collin’s cane against the wall, then dropped down beside her. “What disadvantage?”
Tugging at his sweater sleeve, she pulled him forward, then tucked the second pillow behind his back. His stomach warmed. The heat spread through his chest, then fanned out to his limbs and up his neck. It’d been a long time since anyone had bothered with small matters like his comfort. It
felt good. He was ashamed to admit just how good.
“Because of all the stuff with Gregory, you know a lot more about me than I know about you.” She grabbed the ends of the afghan and shook its folds loose.
It fluttered over their legs and she tugged it up to his waist, then to her own. He could get used to this. “What do you want to know?”
Cally’s expression went serious. “Everything.”
God, but she was beautiful. “That could take a while.” A week, a month—he thought of Miss Hattie’s inference about marriage—maybe a lifetime.
Cally hiked her shoulder. “Time, I’ve got, Counselor. It’s pride, courage, and dreams that I lack.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Do we?”
She wasn’t kidding. And he innately knew his answer was far more important than her inquiring tone would lead him to believe. “Yeah, we do.” He turned more toward her, resting his shoulder against the wall. Their knees touched. He liked the feel. “Know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think you’re confused right now. You loved Gregory and he was supposed to love you back and he didn’t.”
“I don’t want to talk about me anymore.” She looked at Bryce’s tie and frowned. “I want to talk about you.”
“We are.” He checked the knot. Maybe the tie was crooked or something and that’s why she kept staring at it. “I think you’re feeling as if you gave Gregory everything, but everything wasn’t enough.”
“That’s about how I see it.”
No, it was straight. So why was she fixated on it—and still frowning? Maybe she was thinking he was a stuffed shirt again. “I loved Meriam, too.”
Cally lifted her gaze to meet his eyes. “And?”
“It wasn’t enough, either.”
“You weren’t happy?”
“No, I was.” Confused himself, he closed his eyes for a second and let his thoughts settle. “I adored Meriam. She was everything I wasn’t.” His voice dropped a notch. “Adventuresome. Free-spirited. She did exactly as she pleased and told the world to like it or kiss her—”
