by Cara Colter
She was probably never going to see that man again, Cynthia reminded herself sharply. Or encounter him. "Seeing" him was stretching the experience a bit.
She was becoming an old maid—desperate and pa—building dream castles out of a ridiculous and demeaning encounter that any woman with an ounce of good sense would have found insulting!
If she ever encountered that man again, what was she going to do? Swoon? Of course not! She would never give him the satisfaction of knowing the chaos and confusion he had stirred up inside her. She would be cool. Composed. Icy, even. Daring him to steal another kiss…
A knock came on her door, and she pulled a pillow over her head, not willing to encounter the real world.
But then the possibility entered her head that, now that her life had expanded to include the potential for unpredictable moments, it might actually be him!
What if he had tracked her down, as enthralled and intrigued by that kiss as she had been? What if he stood outside her door, with a bouquet of red roses and an apologetic smile on his face? She'd let him have a piece of her mind…before she forgave him.
Cynthia flew from the bed, tugged a hand through the tangle of her hair, tossed a housecoat over her T-shirt and panties and stormed to the door.
She threw it open, and no one was there.
Fantasy collided abruptly and painfully with reality when she realized the knock was coming from the door that adjoined her suite to her mother's.
Trying to bite back her disappointment, resigned, she opened that door. Her mother stood there, perfectly coiffed, not looking the least as if she had danced the night away.
"Darling, time for breakfast."
"You don't eat breakfast," Cynthia reminded her mother, shocked. "Mother, you are never up before the crack of noon."
"Baron Gunterburger—Wilhelm—talked me into joining him. He was so disappointed that you couldn't join us last night. He left early, but made me promise to drag you along to breakfast."
Her mother stopped abruptly and studied her daughter. One eyebrow shot up and her lips pursed thoughtfully.
"What on earth have you been up to?"
"Excuse me? I just got out of bed." Why did she feel guilty? As if she had been up to something? Was there a law against fantasizing about the man who had kissed you showing up at your door to ply you with roses, apologies and promises? Well, probably in her mother's world. There were rules about everything in her mother's world!
"That's just it. It's not like you to sleep late, and," her mother's eyes narrowed, "you have a look about you."
"A look?" Cynthia asked with feigned innocence.
"You don't have pajamas on. You aren't naked under that housecoat, are you?"
"Mother!"
"Well, you look as if you've just been, er, tumbled."
"Tumbled?" Cynthia repeated, nonplused. "Tumbled?"
Her mother looked her up and down and then asked softly, shocked, "Is there someone in there with you?"
She was twenty-six years old. Her mother knew as well as anyone else that there was never anyone with her. But instead of reassuring her mother, she wished she had the nerve to tell her it was none of her business. She wished she was the woman who had swum naked last night, because that woman would have men in her bedroom at dawn if she damn well pleased!
Instead, Cynthia found herself stepping back from the door, so her mother could see through the suite to the open bedroom door and her rumpled—and very empty—bed.
"Well, then, you look as if you wish you'd been, er, tumbled." This was said as if wishing for it was just as great a crime as having done it.
"Tumbled," Cynthia muttered. "What is that? Some seventeenth-century term you've been waiting for an opportunity to use?"
Still, she turned away before her mother could see the blush she could feel burning in her own cheeks. She looked at the clock and gave a theatrical little squeak.
"I have overslept, haven't I?" she said, forcing a breezy note into her voice. "I'll meet you for breakfast in fifteen. Save me a place beside the baron."
If there was one way to distract her mother, it was to play her game.
It worked. Her mother cooed with startled pleasure. "You won't be sorry. You're going to love him, Cynthia."
So love was okay, and probably tumbling, too, as long as the suitor was mommy-approved. Her own cynicism took her by surprise. As she got ready, she managed to salvage a tiny bit of the enthusiasm she had first felt this morning by entertaining a fantasy just as probable as red roses and apologies.
What if it was him? What if the baron was the mystery man who had kissed her last night? Her mother had said he'd left early. Had he wandered down to the beach?
Not that she had detected even a trace of an accent. But then wasn't it possible that a wealthy, well-traveled, well-educated German might speak without an accent? Maybe the raspiness of that voice had been a disguise.
She remembered that voice with a shiver. A voice made of gravel and silk. Impossibly sexy, utterly masculine.
An hour later Cynthia wondered if her mother might have been right.
What was not to love about the singularly handsome and charming young baron? If she had met him twenty-four hours ago, would she have considered him?
He was blond. He had intense blue eyes and a perfect cut of feature. He was casually, but tastefully, dressed, tan and extremely athletic looking.
But he was most definitely not the man she had met last night. She had known before she had even heard him speak, known as soon as she had seen him sharing the table with her mother as she entered the restaurant.
She was not sure how she had been so certain, but she had felt the ache of deep disappointment, which she was willing to admit was a funny reaction given the fact that if it had been her mystery man, she fully intended to greet him by slapping him across the face!
"You're as lovely as your mother promised," the baron said, giving her the full wattage of his smile.
Cynthia was pretty sure the young woman at the next table nearly fainted when he bent over Cynthia's hand and placed a kiss on it.
It was a gesture of such old-world courtliness that she really should have appreciated it. Instead, she snuck a quick look around the room. The man from last night could be anyone here! He could be watching her right now! She felt a tingle of excitement as she contemplated that possibility.
The baron pulled back her chair, and over the next hour proved himself to be attentive, witty and charming.
To Cynthia, despite his considerable charm, the baron did not seem quite real.
She was not sure how it was possible that a man who had emerged from the shadows and then melted back into them, who had been far more dream than reality, could seem so much more real than the handsome flesh-and-blood man vying so nobly and sweetly for her attention.
She found herself scanning the restaurant over and over again, hoping to see someone who would be familiar in some way. In what way she wasn't quite sure. She had not even seen the face of the man who had claimed her lips last night.
But as he had walked away, leaving her lips still tingling from the sensuousness of his kiss, she had seen the dark silhouette of his powerful build, been captivated by his grace, had been left with the sensation she would know him anywhere.
Restless thoughts stirred within her. Was she ever going to see him again? How? It felt as if she had to see him again, as if she could be returned to the sleeping state she had been locked in for so many years if she did not see him again.
Suddenly the baron and her mother seemed like a trap, a trap that would return her to that state of not quite living that she had accepted for far too long.
"Excuse me," she said abruptly. "I just thought of something I have to do."
"Nonsense," her mother said, blinking at her with sweet warning. "Everything you have to do is for me, and we have nothing so urgent that we can't spend a few more minutes with our charming companion."
Cynthia stared at her mothe
r, but she was seeing something else.
A young girl—herself—leaning over the bed of her dying father.
"Promise me," he whispered, his last words, "Cynthia, promise me."
"What?" she asked desperately. "Anything."
"I've brought her nothing but unhappiness," he said sadly.
They both knew he meant her mother. It had been a marriage made in hell, the spell of her father's great looks soon waning in the face of his desperate unsuitability for her mother's blue-blooded world.
"Cynthia, always look after her. Make her happy."
She had promised, and it was that simple. Had it been a hard promise to keep? Yes. But duty came before passion. Those were the rules in the real world, the rules of her mother's world.
There had been a boy in high school who had tested that resolve, from the wrong side of the tracks, as surely as her father had been. She could still remember the way her arms had felt wrapped around the leather of his jacket as she rode the back of his motorcycle.
She could still remember his name.
Rick Barnett.
Her mother had found out about him and had ordered her to end it. And she had. Cynthia had witnessed firsthand her mother and father's exhausting and impossible efforts to marry two worlds. But more, Rick had brought out a wild side she would have been just as pleased not to make acquaintance with. That long-ago boy had brought her to the edge of her self-control—
"Cynthia," her mother said sharply, bringing her back to earth. "Quit looking at me like that, as though you've seen a ghost."
She felt as if she had seen a ghost. What had made her think of Rick, now, after all these years? When the pain of that loss finally had seemed dull and a long, long way away?
The baron's hand covered Cynthia's, and he smiled at her. "On the other hand, my dear, you may look at me any way you choose."
Her mother giggled. "Oh, how utterly lovely you are, Wilhelm."
Cynthia snatched her hand away, feeling oddly as though she had been unfaithful by letting another man touch her. She leapt up from the table.
"Really," she said, "I must go."
"But I was just going to ask Wilhelm to tell you about his yacht. That's how he arrived here at La Torchere. He's moored—"
Cynthia scrambled away, not even glancing back when her mother called after her indignantly.
She knew exactly where she was going and she didn't stop until she arrived back at the beach that had enticed her last night.
It looked different in the day. A scene off a postcard of a perfect vacation—white sands reaching out to turquoise waters, palm trees swaying in a light breeze—but something essential was missing. The magic. The mystery.
Cynthia settled on a lovely wrought-iron bench that had been placed strategically at the sand's edge overlooking the beach. She looked out over the tranquil waters, jade-shaded in the early morning light, trying to recapture something of what she had felt last night. Was it possible she had dreamed it?
Her gaze stopped on a large rock protruding from the tranquil waters of the cove and her breath caught in her throat. Something of what she was looking for—the essence of her experience—was in that rock.
Had it been there last night?
Had it been there before?
Of course it had to have been there! Huge rocks didn't just appear in the water off the shore. The rock had the shape and size of a bear, massive and restless, the power unmistakable.
"Hello, my dear."
Cynthia glanced up, startled to find she was no longer alone. A woman she recognized vaguely from the resort's front office was standing beside the bench, one hand resting on it, her eyes fastened on the rock.
Despite her stylish dress, the woman bore an unfortunate resemblance to the wicked witch in Snow White, but when she turned her eyes to Cynthia, Cynthia saw a startling beauty in them. They were an astonishing shade of violet.
"Has that rock always been there?" she asked, even though it seemed a foolish question. "I can't believe I never noticed it before."
"Oh." The woman waved her hand dismissively. "You know. The tides."
Of course. The tides would come and go, revealing things and hiding things with the water's changing depths.
"Could I join you for a moment?"
Considering how eager she had been to divest herself of her mother's and the baron's company, Cynthia felt strangely open to sharing her bench with the old woman.
"Merry Montrose," the woman said, extending her hand.
Cynthia was startled by the handshake. There was nothing old about it. In fact she felt a shiver of pure energy run up and down her arm as she accepted the woman's hand.
"Cynthia Forsythe."
"Yes, I know."
Cynthia looked askance.
"Resort manager. I try to keep abreast of who is here. Are you enjoying your stay with us?"
"It's a beautiful place," Cynthia said, since enjoyment was not quite how she would describe the unsettled feelings within her.
"Ah, yes," Ms. Montrose said, "the mixed joy of vacationing with family. Nothing against your mother, of course. I enjoy her writing immensely."
Cynthia grinned as if she had found a conspirator. But in what?
"Is that a pair of shoes out there in the sand?"
"I believe it is," Cynthia said, spotting her missing sandals half buried under a mound of sand.
"Oh," Merry said happily. "Do you suppose there was a romantic tryst here last night?"
Cynthia looked at her warily. Had there been more than just the two of them, then?
But Merry had switched her attention from the shoes. "The rock always reminds me of a story, a legend, a gift from our Native American ancestors. Would you like me to tell it to you?"
Cynthia felt a strange shiver. It was one of those moments when you knew the decision you were about to make had repercussions you did not fully understand, but that changed your life forever.
Far too strong a reaction for an old woman's offer to share a tale.
But then weren't all her reactions slightly out of kilter right now, because of the power and mystery of a kiss stolen after midnight? It was as if a spell had been cast on her.
"I would like to hear the story." She was aware even as she said the words that she felt as though she had no choice, she was on a collision course with destiny.
Merry patted her hand, as if she understood the underlying tension. Her voice was soothing and melodious, not the voice of an old woman.
"This is a story from the Native people of the Northwest Coast. Do you know that area? The coastline of British Columbia, running all the way up to Alaska?"
Cynthia shook her head, no.
"It is a narrow, untamed belt of temperate rainforest. It embraces about twelve-hundred miles of rugged coastline, and rocky islands and inlets. It is a place of extreme rainfall and dense mist, where the cedar trees grow to unimaginable size in the shadows of the Coast and Rocky Mountains. It is a place of vibrant greens and formidable and mystical grays."
"The mists," she said, almost dreamily. "They make anything seem possible. The line between shore and water, mountain and tree fades, blurs, until it is hard to know what is real and what is not."
In Cynthia's mind, she could see the place Merry described, feel the brooding mystery of it, almost as if her own line between what was in her mind and what was real was blurring.
"This is a story from the Tsimshian people. It is called 'The Bear Who Married a Woman'."
Cynthia shivered, because the rock had so reminded her of a bear, but also because she had come back to the beach seeking some of the essence of what she had felt last night. She had not found what she sought.
Until she had seen the rock.
She settled back on the bench, her eyes fastened on the "bear" as she listened to the soft soothing sound of a master storyteller weaving a tale.
"In the time before the great sadness came upon the people—when they carved the totem poles and the great
canoes, and celebrated the potlatch and the sacredness of dance, in the time before their children were stolen from their own homes—the People of the Tsimshian lived traditionally by the ocean and gloried in abundance."
"There was a widow who had a beautiful daughter who was modest and hardworking. The daughter wove extraordinary cedar baskets and mats, and she lived with the chastity and purity that were sacred among the tribes. Her black hair swung past her waist, and her dark eyes were lit with the light of the sun upon water. She was much sought after as a wife and many a young man tried to woo her, but she declined them all."
"Her mother had given her precise instructions. 'When a man comes to marry you, feel the palms of his hands. If they are soft, send him away, but if they are rough, accept him'."
Cynthia remembered the roughness of the palm on her cheek last night and gasped out loud at this strange parallel between the story and what had happened to her last night. But Merry appeared lost in the telling of the tale and did not pause, did not even appear to have heard her.
"The widow in her wisdom wanted a good man for her daughter, not one who was lazy, but one who worked hard and knew the traditional ways, whose hands were rough from building canoes and hauling nets, from holding the spear above the surfacing whale."
Cynthia thought her own mother would want qualities that were quite different. The hard hands of a working man would not be on her list of desired qualities of a suitor for her daughter!
"The daughter obeyed her mother. She rejected the wooing of many young men. But one night a youth came to her bed. In the darkness, she could not see him, but when his hand took hers she felt the roughness of it, and her heart gladdened. She accepted him and gave him the gift of herself."
"But in the morning, when she woke, her new husband was gone. She had not even seen his face. But her mother found a halibut on the beach right in front of their lodge, even though it was midwinter, not the time halibut graced these waters."
"The following evening, cloaked in darkness, the husband returned to his young wife. Again, he left before first light, and again he left a gift for his mother-in-law and his new wife, this time a seal. The newlyweds lived like this for some time. The young woman never saw the face of her husband, but each morning she found an offering on the beach, and each morning it was larger than the time before. Thus the mother and her daughter became rich by the standards of the People. They had abundant food. They had oil. They had hides from seals left by the new husband."
