The Edge of Forever

by Bretton, Barbara

  The Edge of Forever

  A Contemporary Romance Novel

  by

  Barbara Bretton

  Praise for USA Today Bestselling Author Barbara Bretton

  The Edge of Forever - RT Reviewers Choice - Best Harlequin American

  "A monumental talent." --Affaire de Coeur

  "Very few romance writers create characters as well-developed as Bretton's. Her books pull you in and don't let you leave until the last word is read." --Booklist (starred review)

  "One of today's best women's fiction authors." --The Romance Reader

  "Barbara Bretton is a master at touching readers' hearts." --Romance Reviews Today

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are 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.

  Copyright 1986, 2012 by Barbara Bretton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Cover and eBook design by Barbara Bretton

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Excerpt from A Soft Place to Fall

  Excerpt from At Last

  Excerpt from Charmed

  Excerpt from I Do, I Do . . . Again

  Excerpt from The Marrying Man

  Excerpt from A Skillet, A Spatula, and a Dream

  Link to Midnight Lover

  Link to Fire's Lady

  Chapter One

  Joe Alessio stood on the top step of St. John's Episcopal, poised for escape. All around him, New England was ablaze with color, the great rush of splendor before the winterkill. It would be easy to pretend he was a tourist, come to northern New Hampshire for a little leaf-peeping R&R, but the heavy wooden doors of the old church weren’t thick enough to keep the minister's words from spilling out and bringing reality with them.

  “. . . so I tell you that Anna Kennedy isn’t really gone . . . “

  The holy man was wrong. Joe didn’t know many things but that was one thing he knew for sure. No more visits. No more phone calls. No more chatty letters filled with gossip and wisdom and no-nonsense encouragement. Oh yeah, Anna was definitely gone.

  The minister, however, thought otherwise and his clipped Yankee tones caught on a bite of emotion that Joe felt clear through to his soul.

  “. . . we see Anna at Lakeland House, arms open wide, her smile bright enough to light the world . . . “

  He told himself that he hadn’t driven five hundred miles to stand out there on the church steps. He was there. The service was underway. He had to go inside. No matter how much it hurt to realize Anna was dead, he owed it to her memory to honor what she had meant to him. But each time he reached for the handle, his gut twisted and he found himself calculating the distance between himself and the car he'd left back in the motel parking lot a few blocks away.

  A gutless coward, that's what he was. One of those spineless rejects he made short work of in his books. The kind of man he despised but understood far too well.

  You're a finer man than you know, Anna had told him early in their friendship.

  Her voice seemed to surround him. Anna Kennedy had believed in him when nobody else had, least of all himself. She had never shirked a responsibility or turned away from a friend in her life.

  He sucked in a gulp of piney air, squared his shoulders, and was about to grab for the brass handle again when the massive wooden door squeaked open and a tall slender blonde stepped into the sunlight, frowned in his general direction, and began to drop.

  He was in motion before he had time to form a thought. It was a long way down the stone steps and he managed to grab her before she began the long fall toward the ground. Her body loose-limbed and delicate in his arms, a surprisingly light bundle for such a tall woman, and he easily scooped her up and carried her down the dozen steps, where he sat her down on the grass.

  “Oh God,” she said, looking up at him with the unfocused stare of the almost-conscious. “Have I made a total fool of myself?"

  “You're asking the wrong person," he said with a smile. "It isn't every day a beautiful woman falls at my feet."

  She pushed against his arm and sat up. Her hair was long and intricately braided, and she flung the plait back over her shoulder as she considered him.

  “I fell at your feet?” Her eyes were a very dark brown streaked with flecks of gold, a strange and exotic combination with her pale blonde hair.

  “Afraid so.” He smoothed down the collar of her black coat with the back of his hand, smothering a sudden desire to touch the apricot skin of her cheek. “Do you make a habit of it or was I just lucky?"

  He sensed she was sizing him up. "It's a first," she said after a moment, "but I'm the lucky one." She glanced toward the steps and shuddered. "I owe you."

  “So are you okay now?” He’d never seen hair as fine and blond as hers before. It seemed to sparkle with captured moonlight and stars. “Need some water?”

  She shook her head. “It was so blasted hot in there that I—“ She stopped mid-sentence. “Who am I kidding? I couldn’t handle it.” For the first time, those limitless eyes of hers looked away. “I felt as if the walls were closing in on me.”

  Joe pulled a cigarette from the pocket of his jacket. He offered her one but she shook her head. “At least you went inside,” he said after a long, comforting drag. “I haven’t been that scared of anything since I was in the Marines.”

  She didn’t question his statement, merely nodded her head.

  Joe ground out his barely-smoked cigarette and they walked back toward the stone steps. A low rumble of voices raised in prayer seeped through the church door. What the hell was he doing there? He should have honored Anna in his own way, remembered her as she should be remembered, not with pious prayer and anonymous condolences. He wanted to grab his bag and leave, but the woman next to him straightened her shoulders and opened the door.

  “We owe it to Anna,” the woman said. Her gaze was so direct that he found it impossible to disagree.

  He followed her inside and slid into the last pew next to her. He tried to zero in on the minister’s words, but they seemed to fade away by the time they reached him.

  A man Joe recognized as one of Anna’s friends from the days when her husband was alive stepped up to the lectern.

  “Anna Kennedy lived the way a human being should live,” the man began, his voice rough with emotion but steady. “She embraced every day—every second—of her long life as if it were the most precious of gifts, and more importantly, she managed to share her zest for life with many of you who have come today to honor her.”

  Across the aisle a woman in a purple hat began to cry softly.

  “Sorrow wasn’t in Anna’s vocabulary,” the man continued. “She loved life too much, and she simply had too much love to give to the writers and artists who came to Lakeland House in droves.”

  Tears he hadn’t shed since his father’s death made his eyes sting, and he blinked rapidly to clear them.

  “And so we’re not here today to sing sad songs or weep for Anna Kennedy’s death. No. We’re here to celebrate her life.”

  Joe was about to lose it when the incredible, vibrant sounds of the last section of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture blasted
forth from the loudspeakers as the mourners began to file out of the church.

  Anna's idea of quiet dinner music had been this rousing theme meant to lead men into battle, not bouillabaisse. He pictured her at the long dinner table, conducting the crescendo with her sterling-silver salad fork. He’d be damned if he’d mourn her with weeping and sorrow He glanced at the woman next to him, and a crazy smile spread across his face.

  The woman smiled back at him and in that instant he knew his life was about to change forever.

  #

  The cemetery was situated at the edge of town, a five minute walk from the church. Meg Lindstrom and the dark-haired man who had saved her from tumbling down the stairs clasped hands and joined the procession of mourners who walked behind the hearse. The silence was deep and profound. The only sounds were the wind rustling the remaining leaves, the low rumble of the flower-filled hearse, and random birdsong.

  The ceremony was brief and unbearably poignant. The dark-haired man next to her choked up a time or two but she was the one who needed the packet of Kleenex she'd tucked into her pocket. She liked the way he seemed to understand the value of silence. She also liked the strong, angular bones of his face, the hawk-like nose and the beautifully made mouth below. His skin was light olive with high color around they cheeks, just the slightest hint of dark beard showed. If she had had her camera with her right then, she would have posed him in a thick tangle of woods with a thin shaft of sunlight backlighting his face. He must have felt her eyes on him, for he looked at her, a steady measuring look, then gave her hand a slight squeeze.

  She was grateful to have that human hand to hold on to and she suspected he was just as grateful.

  “Are you going to brunch at the house?” he asked as they walked back to the church.

  Meg thought of the clusters of mourners who would be there—wealthy people in furs mingling with perennially starving artists—and shook her head. “Lakeland House without Anna? I don’t think so.” She looked at him. “What about you?”

  “I’m the one who couldn’t make it into the church.”

  “You went in,” she said.

  “Only because you did.”

  She was about to ask him if he had a car with him or if he needed a ride when a tall, slim man with a thick head of grey hair approached them.

  “Well, if it’s not the luck of the Irish at work.” His voice was deep and musical, touched with a trace of brogue. “And how grand is it to find you two together like this?”

  Meg glanced at the dark-haired man next to her, who shrugged his shoulders.

  “I see my smiling face means nothing to you fine people,” the older man said easily. “I’m Patrick McCallum, Anna’s attorney, and you’re Joseph Alessio and Margarita Lindstrom.” They said nothing. McCallum looked from one to the other and his smile widened. “You can’t deny it,” he said, pulling two photos from his inside breast pocket and extending them toward Meg and Joe. “You both might be a little older, but time hasn’t done any damage at all.”

  Meg barely recognized the face looking up at her from the grainy black-and-white photo. It wasn’t that she had been that much younger—five years made little difference—but the look in her eyes was one of such innocence, such enthusiasm, that she turned away and reached for the other picture.

  “This is you?” she asked, looking from the flat, one-dimensional image to the living, breathing original next to her.”You look so. . . so—“

  “Angry.” Joe snatched the picture from her, glanced at it, then handed it back. “I was.” He pulled another cigarette from his coat pocket. “Very angry.”

  It wasn’t a professional shot. No pro would ever have allowed his strong-boned face to disappear into shadow and yet the anger in his eyes still singed her fingers as she held the picture. He was thinner in the photo, less muscular, his denim work shirt open at the neck. Nestled in the thick chest hair was a medal of some kind, and below that dog tags. His black hair was long; its straight strands covered his brow and brushed below the collar of his shirt. Most of his face was hidden by a beard and moustache that lacked the lushness of maturity.

  He was sitting on a window seat, lighted cigarette in two fingers of his left hand, which rested on his right knee. His eyes, a brilliant deep green in reality, seemed dark and mysterious in the photo. Through the bay window behind him, Meg could just make out the figures of people playing with a Frisbee in Anna’s Lakeland House backyard.

  “I know that room,” she said, handing Joe the photo. “That was where the dancers practiced.”

  Joe passed the photo to McCallum, who was quietly observing the two of them. “When I was at Lakeland, there were no dancers.”

  “I thought Anna catered to all the arts,” Meg said. “When I was there, she—“

  “Mrs. Kennedy opened her doors to dancers three years after Joe’s stay,” Patrick McCallum broke in, sliding the two snapshots into his coat pocket. “Which is a good five years before you arrived.”

  Meg turned to Joe and quickly assessed him.

  “I’m not as young as you thought,” Joe said with a quick grin.

  “I thought you were around my age.”

  “Which is?”

  “Twenty-six years and three months,” McCallum volunteered. “Margarita was born July sixth and you, Joseph, were born July seventh—a difference of seven years and one day.”

  Next to her, Joe bristled. “How the hell do you know so much about us?”

  McCallum’s face, lined and friendly as a basset hound’s, lit up. “I was Anna’s lawyer and I know everything about the people she cared most for.”

  “I’m flattered,” Meg said, “but I don’t really see why it—“

  “Matters,” Joe broke in.

  McCallum’s sigh was long and low. “I hadn’t wanted to bring this up until we got to Lakeland House.”

  “We weren’t planning to go back to the house,” Meg said.

  McCallum stepped between them and draped an arm around each one of them. “Oh no, no, no, my dear people. That can’t be.”

  “The hell it can’t,” Joe said, temper clearly getting the better of him. “I’m driving back to Princeton tonight.”

  The intense young man in the photo sprang to life in front of Meg. She was fascinated but poor McCallum seemed cowed.

  “We just said goodbye to someone we loved. It’s been a shitty morning and I don’t think either I or-“ He fumbled for her name.

  “Meg,” she said.

  His look was one of thanks and apology. “I don’t think either Meg or I want to be strong-armed into—“

  “Strong-armed?” McCallum released Meg so quickly it was like she’d caught fire. “Strong-armed, is it?” His pale blue eyes were filled with concern. “Good God, but it has been a difficult morning, hasn’t it?” He rubbed his square chin absently. “Didn’t I make it clear? You, Joseph, and you, Margarita, are both requested to be present.”

  “Requested by whom?” Joe still sounded wary.

  “By Anna.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Meg’s voice rose an octave.

  “I spoke with Anna a few hours before she died,” McCallum explained. “She said the will cannot be read except in your presence.” He favored them with another smile. “Your presences.”

  “This is the first I’ve heard of anything like this,” Meg said as an uncomfortable fluttering began in the pit of her stomach. “You’d think Anna would’ve mentioned it.”

  Joe shook his head. “Not the Anna I knew. She delighted in surprises.”

  “Now you get the idea.” McCallum, satisfied that he was finally understood, draped his arms over their shoulders once again and propelled Meg and Joe back toward the church and the waiting cars. “This is going to be a very interesting afternoon all around.”

  Chapter Two

  “Lakeland is on the other side of town,” McCallum continued, “but then, of course, you both know that already, don’t you?” He pointed to a light tan Volvo sedan parked a fe
w yards from Meg’s limousine. “I’d be happy to give you a ride.”

  “I appreciate the offer,” Meg said, pointing toward the long- sleek luxury car sparkling in the sun, “but I have my own ride.”

  Both men turned to look, and she laughed out loud as their jaws dropped in surprise.

  McCallum was the first to recover his poise. “It looks like I should be asking you for a ride.”

  “You’re more than welcome to one.”

  The older man shook his head. “No, no, but thank you. It wouldn’t do for me to get too accustomed to the good life. My tastes are rich enough as it is.” He patted both Meg and Joe on the shoulders. “Give me a minute to get my car started and you can follow me.”

  “Do you have a car with you?" Meg asked Joe.

  “Back at the motel. I walked to the church.”

  “Then you might as well ride with me.”

  McCallum gunned his engine.

  “I think the lawyer’s getting restless,” Joe said. “Where’s your driver?

  She dangled a ring of keys in front of him. “You’re looking at her.”

  “You rented a limo?”

  “No, I own a limo. I’m a chauffeur.” She gestured toward the front passenger seat and claimed her spot behind the wheel.

  “You own your own limo service?” Joe Alessio asked as she pulled out of her parking spot and fell into line behind McCallum.

  “I own the car, not the service. I work for my friend’s husband.”

  He was staring at her with unguarded curiosity. “Why?”

  “Why not?” she countered as they rolled to a stop at a red light.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s the only one you’re getting.”

  The light turned green and she continued following McCallum.

  “Were you a dancer at Lakeland?”

  She shot him a quick sidelong glance. “A photographer.”

  “And you dumped photography to drive a limo.” He shook his head. “Nobody does that.”