by Hinze, Vicki
Stark and white, the dustcovers lay still atop the furniture. The temperature remained warm.
Her heart shattered.
Her beloved had gone.
Chapter 16
The TV was on in the salon. The superhero gathered more power on The Highlander, then the screen changed to an update on the late-night news. A lamp on a table beside a wing chair near the windows cast a circle of soft light onto the eggshell carpet. Bryce ignored it all and focused intently on Cally.
Sitting on the sofa beside him with a bowl of popcorn on her lap, she popped a kernel into her mouth, then crunched down on it. Butter sheened on her lips, almost more tempting than he could bear, but he had put off talking to her about Gregory and his threats as long as Bryce dared. They’d be getting married tomorrow. She had to know the truth tonight. She deserved honesty; he’d promised her that. And she deserved time to react.
“Cally?”
She licked the salt and butter sheen from her fingertip. “Hmm?”
“Gregory thinks we’ve been having an affair and that’s why I arranged the alimony.”
“Well, he’s wrong.” She dug into the bowl for more popcorn. But her hand wasn’t quite steady.
“He says if we marry, he’s going to file a complaint against me with the ethics committee. I imagine he’ll also file suit for conflict of interest and professional misconduct.”
Buried beneath the kernels, her hand went still. “Can he do that?”
“Honey, anyone can sue. We can prove the charges aren’t true, but the court and publicity will be messy. And he’s said he won’t stop until he has me disbarred.”
“Oh, God.”
“I didn’t tell you this because I want you to panic. Only because you have the right to know what’s up ahead.”
“He’ll do it.” She finally wheeled her gaze to Bryce. “Even if he has to lie. He’s a manipulative bastard, Bryce, and an accomplished liar.” She set the bowl onto the coffee table, then wiped her hands on a napkin. “I’ll do what I have to do.”
A fissure of fear cracked open inside him. “What does that mean?”
She cupped his face, smoothed her fingertips along his beard, and swallowed hard. “I won’t let him hurt you and the children. He can’t put all of you through this—it’d affect your ability to provide for the family financially. I can’t let that happen.”
“I don’t like the sounds of this.” Bryce grimaced, fearing he knew what next would come out of her mouth, and honestly hating it.
Her eyes shining overly bright, she whispered, “I can’t marry you.”
“That’s not an option.”
“It’s the only option I have. You and the kids need calm and security. If I don’t call him and put a stop to this, you’ll have neither. And I’m telling you, Bryce, I have fourteen years’ worth of experience that tells me he’ll stop at nothing—at nothing—to get what he wants.” Her swallow rippled her throat and her voice went husky thick. “I love the kids, and I care for you. I can’t, I won’t, let this happen.”
She stood up then headed toward the door.
Bryce went after her. At the bookcase near the hall leading to the gallery, he caught her by the shoulder. “Cally, wait.”
She kept going.
“Cally, please.” Bryce held her more firmly, insisting she stop.
She turned to look at him, her heartbreak clear on her face, in the depths of her tormented eyes. “I have to do this. I wanted to be sunshine to you, Bryce, not storms. I can’t live with me, causing all of you pain.” Her chin quivered. “I just can’t.”
He closed his arms around her. “You are sunshine to us. Being with you, even with trouble, is better than being without you, Cally. Don’t you see that? Isn’t it obvious to you that we all need you? The kids and me?”
A sob escaped her throat and deep shudders wracked her body. She buried her face at the cay in his neck. “Why is he doing this? He’s gotten exactly what he wanted. Everything he wanted. Why isn’t that enough for him?”
Bryce had his suspicions. After the conversation today, he felt certain Gregory Tate didn’t want Cally, he just didn’t want anyone else to have her. Bryce couldn’t tell her that, of course. Or that he had done the unthinkable and fallen in love with her when they’d agreed that love would have no part in their relationship. Yet without telling her, he had no way to hold her. He needed her. He and the kids needed her. Wanted her. Loved her. And no way was he going to let Gregory Tate take her from them. Not now. Not ever.
When her sobs weakened to sniffles, he kissed the tears from her damp cheeks, letting his thumbs whisk across the ruddy blades of her cheekbones. “Let’s think about this overnight, okay? Before we do anything. We’re emotional about it. And we both know what happens when we act on our emotions rather than on logic.”
She nodded. “Okay. But I won’t let him hurt you or the M and M’s. I could sleep longer than Rip Van Winkle and that would never change.”
Her insistence yanked hard at protective chords inside him, and he gave her a tender smile. “I know you won’t, sweetheart.”
Just after dawn, Cally awakened in a cold sweat. She sat straight up in bed, her heart pounding in her temples, and waited for the dread and fear from the dream to subside and the cobwebs of sleep to fall clear from her mind.
“It was just a dream.” She buried her face in her hands and repeated the litany a few more times, praying it’d take hold in her mind. “It was just a dream. It was just a dream.”
But was it?
Suzie’s wasn’t an ordinary dream. Cally knew that as well as she knew she sat in her bed in the Great White Room. She pulled up her knees, scrunched the quilts at her chin, then tried to put into order the vivid images she’d seen in her mind.
She’d been at Mary Beth’s grave at home, with the yellow carnation. She’d put it there at the base of the headstone, just as she always had, but when she’d straightened up and turned around, Hatch had stood there beside her, his corncob pipe propped between his lips. With his wizen eyes, he was staring intently at her. Words he’d said to her before, and those she’d heard others say, tumbled from his lips in a great rush:
Decide what you really want, Cally. Seek your strength in love. Decide what you fear more. Is it Gregory? Or is it loving and losing Bryce and the M and M’s?
She did fear Gregory. She knew how low he’d stoop, how far he’d go. With the vasectomy and the reversal of it, how could she not know? But more than she feared him, she loved Bryce. And the M and M’s. And, God give her strength, she feared losing them more than she’d feared anything in her life.
You’ve got to get and keep both oars in the water. Suzie’s dream’s a premonition, in my estimation. You’ll be their new mom, maybe.
The oars. Suzie’s grown-up friend Selena’s words to Suzie. The premonition. A warning from Hatch? He was the only man she’d ever heard use that “in my estimation” phrase. Cally wasn’t sure, but it seemed like a warning, and it felt like a warning. In the dream, Suzie drowned. Was the warning that Cally should watch over Suzie more closely, or that she could drown in real life? And the “new mom” verbiage. Suzie’s prophesy—or maybe Tony’s prophesy related by Suzie to Cally, on the day Cally arrived at Seascape Inn.
If only you have the courage to believe, miracles can happen beside a dreamswept sea.
Are you believing, Cally? Are you believing?
Cally stilled. Was she believing?
All of this. Hatch’s saying down at the pond that if she ran into special trouble to come to him. The woman’s voice at Mary Elizabeth’s grave.
Oh, God, this with Suzie tonight hadn’t been a dream. It’d been a message to Cally—from the woman. A warning.
Who was she?
Cally stared past the mirror and thought hard. There were two possibilities. Meriam or Mary Elizabeth.
Frankly Cally considered Meriam too self-focused for it to be her. And she was content. Poor Bryce had been terribly upset about that. No, not Meriam. Between
the battleaxe and Bryce, Meriam had left them feeling certain of their ability to deal with whatever lay ahead.
That left Mary Elizabeth. Why she’d bother, Cally had no idea. But maybe enough of her mother, Cecelia, was in her daughter that when Cally had gone to Mary Elizabeth’s grave she’d felt compelled to somehow warn Cally. Or maybe not.
For some reason, the messenger being Mary Elizabeth fit, and yet it didn’t fit. It felt both right and wrong.
Why, Cally would have to sort out later. Right now, she had other things to do. A priority listing. She was going to marry Bryce today. But not until after she confronted a demon that she damn well should have confronted a long time ago.
She tossed back the covers and walked over to the mirror, fury fueling her steps, then stared directly into her own eyes. Gregory Tate had pushed her hard for a long time. But in threatening her now, in threatening Bryce and the kids, the man had pushed her too far. He’d pushed those she loved.
And now she was going to push back.
The ivory and white phone on the dresser beckoned her. Knowing the thing worked more often than not only when it wanted, she was determined that it would work right now.
She lifted the receiver, then put it to her ear. On hearing the dial tone, she smiled. “If only you have the courage to believe . . .”
After dialing the number, she jotted down a note to herself to tell Miss Hattie about the charges, then let her gaze drift out of the windows. Pink and lavender tinged the sky in languid streaks, and the sun sat like a brilliant orange ball out over the ocean on the horizon. It was dawn. About five A.M. in Mississippi, where Gregory and Joleen now lived. He wouldn’t be awake yet—not for another two hours, typically. And it gave Cally a perverse pleasure that she’d disturb him at an inconvenient time. Not very noble, but pleasing nonetheless.
The phone rang for the third time.
Groggy-voiced, he answered. “Tate.”
“Gregory, this is Cally. I want to talk to you.”
“Caline.” He sounded surprised. “I want to talk to you, too.” Something rustled in the background as if he were shoving at covers to get out of bed. “Hold on and let me get to another phone.”
Obviously, he didn’t want to wake his wife. “Fine.”
During the wait, she crossed her free hand over her chest, stood bouncing her hip against the side of the dresser.
“Okay.” He came back on the line. “Listen, Caline.”
“I prefer Cally.”
“I see. Well, what I want to say is that I’m sorry I flew off the handle yesterday. The trouble is”—he paused dramatically, as only Gregory could—“I’m not happy.”
The sorry animal cracker. The fear inside her dissipated. She’d slipped back into the habit of giving him power over her. But fear wasn’t as strong as love. And she loved Bryce. “A guilty conscience can do that to you, Doctor.”
“Yes, it can. Would it help if I said I was sorry?”
“It couldn’t hurt.”
“I am sorry, and I—I—hell, Caline, I want you back.”
“Excuse me?” She pulled the phone away from her ear, stared at it as if it’d sprouted horns.
“I’m not happy. Joleen is just like my mother. She has all the time in the world for kids, but none for me. She doesn’t do all the things you did for me.”
His mother, the pediatrician, and his wife, the biochemist. “No other woman would do all those things for you. And it’s damned selfish of you to expect them to. It’s even worse for you to compare us. How dare you do that?”
“What’s gotten into you?”
Love, she wanted to shout. A huge, unselfish dose of love. “Nothing. You’ve gotten out of me.”
“Don’t say that, Caline. We had a lot of good years together.”
Had they? Had they really? “You had a lot of good years, Gregory. I was just along for the ride, making them better for you.”
“You were happy, damn it. Don’t tell me you weren’t happy.”
“At first, yes. But then things changed.” Something miraculous was happening inside her. Something so miraculous she couldn’t tag it with a name. Yet she understood it completely. For the first time, she saw their relationship exactly as it had been. Exactly. And she felt, honestly felt from the bone out, that she deserved better. She deserved Bryce and the M and M’s. “Look, I didn’t phone you to rehash our pasts. That’s all over now.”
“I don’t want it to be over. I want you back.”
“No. You have a wife and son, and you belong with them.”
“Because of the child?”
“Your child needs you, but the simple truth is I don’t want you, Gregory. I don’t love you.”
“Caline!”
“Don’t, okay? My love never meant anything to you. If it had, you wouldn’t have done what you did. So don’t insult us both now by pretending otherwise.”
“But—”
“But, nothing.” She paused to pull in a breath and prayed a second wind of courage would infuse her. “I called to warn you not to mess with me anymore, Gregory. Or with mine. That includes Bryce and our kids.”
“You don’t have any kids.”
“At two o’clock today, I’ll have three—officially. And if you stir up so much as a puff of air to hurt any of them, any of us, I’m going to come at you from places you didn’t know you had.”
“Don’t threaten me, Caline. We both know you’re too weak to—”
“Don’t bet on it. You’ll lose. I was weak. I feared you. But I’m not weak and I don’t fear you anymore. I never will again. You mess with me or mine and you’re going to find out exactly how strong I’ve become. It won’t be pretty. We were married fourteen years. You swept a lot of dirt under rugs and hid a lot of skeletons in closets. We’ll start with the IRS. Maybe wave a few red flags at the insurance commissioner and the attorney general. The point is, you have dirt and skeletons. I have the dustpan holding all your dirt and the keys to your closets. If you do anything, anything at all that even carries a faint scent of harm, I’m going to sneeze and open locks.”
His breath rattled through the phone, but he said nothing.
Her palms were soaking wet. The phone slick in her hand. She swiped her palm over her nightgown, grabbed the phone, then swiped her other palm dry. “You know I can do it, Gregory.”
“You won’t.”
“I love them. You know from experience the lengths I’ll go to for those I love. How in hell can you doubt it?”
“Damn it.”
A burst of triumph exploded in her stomach. “I take it we’re agreed then, and you’ll be leaving us alone.”
“It doesn’t appear you’ve given me any choice.”
“No, I haven’t.”
Smiling, she hung up the phone.
Someone tapped at her door. She looked toward the heavy wood. “Yes?”
“Cally, it’s me. Bryce.”
“Don’t you come in here. It’s our wedding day and I can’t see you before the ceremony.”
“You mean you’ve decided to go through with it?”
She walked to the door, pressed her palms against the wood, as if she were touching him. Tears of joy stung her eyes. Her sense of worth was restored. “You bet I am, Counselor.”
“Cally.”
One word. Five little letters, but they held so much meaning she couldn’t hold it all in her heart. “I phoned Gregory. He won’t be bothering us anymore.”
“I would have handled him, honey.”
“I needed to do it myself.” She smiled, her vision blurred. “And now I have.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“Me, too.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Later,” she sniffed. “I’ve got a wedding to get ready for.” A wedding that would be perfect if only she could tell the wonderful man on the other side of the door that she loved him. With all her heart.
“Okay. But later.”
“Okay.” She muffled a sniff behin
d her hand.
“Did I remember to tell you Jimmy’s picking up Selena at the airport?”
“Suzie’s Selena?”
“Yeah, Selena Mystic. She could only come in for the day because she’s on a business trip. Suzie invited her.”
“Selena’s very important to Suzie. I’m glad she’s coming.”
“You’re something, Cally Tate.”
“I keep good company, Counselor.” Sensing he was about to leave, she called out. “Bryce?”
“Yes?”
“Tell Suzie to stay away from the water.”
“What?”
“Just tell her, okay? The pond and the ocean.”
“Okay. Is there a special reason, or is it just a general warning?”
She leaned a shoulder against the door. “It’s probably nothing. But it might be important. See, I had this dream . . .”
A gentle knock at the door had Cally and Miss Hattie swiveling their heads to see who had come.
“I do believe the entire village has traipsed through this bedroom this morning, Cally.” Miss Hattie tsked, and shuffled to the Great White Room’s hallway door.
“Only half,” Cally said. “The women.”
The door opened, and a beautiful brunette stood there. Petite and classy, dressed in warm autumn colors that made her skin look translucent, she walked in smiling. “Hi, Miss Hattie.” She gave the angel a warm hug.
Cally lifted a questioning brow. Over her shoulder, Miss Hattie gestured she had no idea who the bubbly woman holding her was. She looked to be in her twenties. Very pretty in an offbeat kind of way.
She released Miss Hattie and stepped fully into the room. “My God, there’s a lot of love in here. So much it almost knocks you off your feet.”
Miss Hattie smiled, clearly liking the woman. “That’s because it was Cecelia and Collin’s room at one time.” She let her gaze drift fondly over everything in the room. “Most of the important things in their life happened in this room.”
“You can feel it, can’t you?” She closed her eyes, as if sucking in the ambience. “It’s so powerful.”
“It’s soothing,” Cally said, more to remind the woman she was there than anything else.
