by Nash, Jean
The Sea Star
* * * *
by
Jean Nash
E-Book ISBN: 978-1-61026-055-8
Other Books by Jean Nash
A Love Through All Time
Prologue
Atlantic City
1899
It was early, not yet seven, a bleak sunless morning. Jay Grainger stood alone at the water’s edge, his coat collar turned up, hands in trouser pockets, looking out toward a restless sea that was all but invisible. A dense fog hung in the air, stinging his eyes, chilling his bones. With monotonous regularity the beam of Absecon Light swung over the water, alerting passing ships to the danger of shoals and reefs.
It was late July, the height of the season. Normally at this hour, early risers were already choosing a spot on the beach or riding the four-mile length of the Boardwalk in hand-pushed rolling chairs. But today, because of the fog, no one was about except Jay. Now and again he could hear a distant foghorn and the muted clang of a bell from a bobbing buoy.
Jay had risen before dawn, unable to sleep. Last night he had played cards at Dutchy’s, the last of a week-long Faro game. Afterwards, he left his friend and attorney, Ford Weston, at the gambling house, returned to the hotel and went straight to bed. But for some reason he lay awake for hours, tossing and turning, thinking about the fire—something he hadn’t done in months.
He kept hearing the victims’ screams. He could see with painful clarity the gutted building, the stunned survivors stumbling about with tattered clothing and scorched hair and skin. More than three years had passed since that tragedy, but whenever Jay thought about it, the memory was as vivid as if it had just happened.
The fire had broken out shortly before midnight on the coldest November night New York City had ever known. The city official who later investigated the fire had said it probably started in the cellar, a faulty incinerator perhaps, or a flaw in the newly installed electrical wiring system. Whatever the cause, the flames had spread quickly, snaking up to the lobby through walls and stairwells, then up through the entire six floors of the Saint Andrew Hotel, consuming draperies, furnishings, and sleeping hotel guests.
Fire Company Number 9 had responded swiftly to the alarm, but in the scant twelve minutes it took for them to arrive on the scene, the Saint Andrew was already engulfed in flames.
The night air had been frigid. Water from the fire hoses had frozen as soon as it hit the building, forming a panorama of ghostly icicles on the charred facade. A crowd had gathered on Broadway to watch the horrible spectacle. Mounted policemen kept order as best they could, but morbid curiosity seekers and brazen journalists had edged closer to the fire to get a better look.
Jay had gone into the blazing building again and again, shepherding terrified guests and staff to safety. When the firemen took over, he had stood on the edge of the crowd, his dark hair singed, his hands stinging with burns, his blue-gray eyes the color of slate, reflecting the flames as if they raged within himself.
Afterwards, he had very little recollection of his heroic efforts. He remembered only those he had been unable to save: a panic-stricken woman who broke out of his arms and ran back into the flames; and a hotel employee, not yet twenty, killed before Jay’s eyes by a falling, blazing beam.
Now, as Jay stared out over the fog-shrouded ocean in Atlantic City, he realized why that memory had resurfaced last night. The hotel employee who had died in the fire looked very much like the young man who had sustained heavy losses in the week-long card game. Dallas Sterling was the unlucky gambler’s name. He had the face of a choirboy, cherubic auburn curls and ingenuous brown eyes, but Jay had come to know that a devilish cunning lay beneath the young man’s angelic facade.
There had been four other men at the Faro table besides Jay, his attorney, and Sterling. By week’s end, Sterling owed five thousand dollars, a sum which Dutchy the proprietor assured everyone would be paid by the young man.
“The lad’s good for it,” Dutchy said when accounts were being settled. “He and his sister own a hotel here in the city. I’m sure he’ll have no trouble raising the money to pay all you gentlemen off.”
Jay looked over at Sterling, who was signing markers with a shaking hand. The young man’s face was very white. Beads of perspiration dotted his brow. He looked up suddenly and caught sight of Jay’s compassionate gaze. His trapped expression changed, became hopeful, a little cocky.
“Mr. Grainger,” he said and sauntered over to him with a smile, “might you be interested in a little business proposition?”
Jay finished off his whiskey and glanced at his attorney. “Perhaps,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Well, you see,” Sterling said, straddling a chair opposite Jay, “I own half the Sea Star over on Pacific Avenue, but I’m not much interested in the hotel business. You, I understand, have devoted your entire life to it. You’re rather a celebrity, you know, even down here in Atlantic City.”
“Really?” Jay lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. He had met Sterling’s type before, a man sharp but soft, one who had probably never done a day’s work in his life, a good-looking rogue who used charm to gain his ends as easily and unconsciously as a rose beguiles a bee. “What have you heard about me?”
“You own hotels in almost every major city in the East,” Sterling said smoothly. “You were born into money, but your father lost it all on Black Friday, so when you were sixteen, you took a job at the old Metropolitan Hotel. Within a few years you rose to the position of general manager, ingratiating yourself with the owner, who left you the hotel in his will. You subsequently sold the place and began acquiring hotels of your own. Am I correct so far?”
“Essentially,” Jay said, crossing his arms over his chest. “But what about that business proposition you mentioned? I assume it has to do with your hotel.”
“It does.” Sterling leaned forward eagerly. “Do you know the Sea Star? Have you ever seen it?”
“Yes,” Jay said. “Four or five years ago I wanted to buy it, but your father wouldn’t sell. After he died, my attorney here made a generous offer to your sister, which she also declined.”
“But that’s incredible!” Sterling exclaimed, clearly taken unawares. “She never told me about that. Well, look here,” he said, recovering quickly. “That makes it all the better. You want the Sea Star. I want to unload my half of it.”
“I didn’t say I still wanted it.” Jay extinguished his cigarette. “The fact is, I’m planning to build a hotel of reinforced concrete on the Boardwalk.”
Sterling frowned. “What the devil is reinforced concrete?”
“It’s a new process,” Jay said, “developed by Thomas Edison. Mr. Edison assures me that a building constructed of that material will be completely fireproof.”
Sterling eyed him skeptically, started to respond, then apparently thought better of it. “I suppose you know what you’re doing.”
“Yes,” Jay said quietly. “I do.”
“My proposition may still interest you,” Sterling went on, undeterred. “I take it you know what my hotel is worth.”
“Your hotel? You don’t look old enough to legally own anything.”
“I turned twenty-one last week!” Sterling said indignantly. “Ask Dutchy if you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you.” Jay’s tone was bland. “Go on with what you were saying.”
“Very well. I have a five thousand dollar debt here, including what I owe you. If you wipe the slate clean, pay off my other markers and give me fifteen thousand dollars cash, I’ll let you have my half of the Sea Star.”
Jay’s attorney coughed discreetly. When Jay looked at him, he gave a barely perceptible nod.
But Jay said to Sterling, “Why should I bother investin
g in a fifty-year-old guest house when I’m planning to build a luxury hotel?”
Sterling’s gaze sharpened. The planes of his face seemed to lengthen, mature. “Let’s not fence with each other,” he said. “You know it’s a sound bargain, and so does your attorney.”
It was true, there was no denying it, but Jay remained resistant. Although Sterling was a full fifteen years younger than Jay, he sensed that behind those ingenuous brown eyes and that choirboy’s face lay a self-serving shrewdness that was older than antiquity.
“What about your sister?” he asked. “Won’t she object to the transaction?”
“My father died intestate,” Sterling told him. “The Sea Star devolved to my sister and me, and there’s no written contract between us. I’ve already talked with an attorney. I can do what I wish with my half of the hotel.”
Jay looked toward his attorney again, who nodded corroboration of the young man’s words.
“Suppose I wanted to buy your sister’s half, too? Would she be willing to sell now?”
Sterling gave him a fawning smile. “The right person might convince her to do so. And let me add, Mr. Grainger, that the task would be a pleasurable one for you. My sister is so beautiful it makes one’s head spin. She looks like a charming sea sprite, with luminous green eyes and sun-kissed chestnut hair. Her skin is the color of ivory, flawless. She has rose-tinted cheeks, a perfect nose, and the sweet curve of her mouth is perfection.”
Jay stared at him, biting back hard words. Sterling sounded like a slimy procurer, attempting to sell his sister to the highest bidder.
“What makes you think I’m the right person to convince her?”
“Mr. Grainger,” the young man said silkily, “your reputation with the ladies is also well-known here. The newspapers say that with your wealth and influence—not to mention your good looks—you’re the most eligible bachelor on the entire Eastern Seaboard. Now tell me truthfully,” he added in a conspiratorial tone, “is there anything you’ve ever wanted from a woman that you haven’t been able to get?”
Jay was silent a moment. He greatly disliked this unpleasant character, but he never let personal considerations sway his business judgment. “No,” he said finally, “I can’t say that there is.”
“Then why are we wasting time? Let’s draw up a contract. My sister will pose no problem, I assure you.”
One
Susanna Sterling often dreamed of the sea, living as she did in sight of the Atlantic Ocean. On Absecon Island, where Atlantic City is situated, one could not ignore the sea. In fair weather it was splendid, majestic. When it stormed, the waves pounded on shore like some mammoth beast from the dark caves of prehistory. The very name of the island, Absegami as it was called by the Lenni-Lenape Indians, meant “Little Sea Water.” Susanna loved the Atlantic Ocean. She loved its power and mystery, its ever-changing beauty. That she often dreamed of it was not unusual. But always her dreams had been tranquil ones, comforting—until recently. Within the past few months, they frightened her so badly that she feared to fall asleep.
The most disturbing part of her dreams was that they invariably began so pleasantly. She would be on the Boardwalk with her brother Dallas. As always, he was handsomely turned out in a white linen suit, blue shirt and silk tie, and a rakish straw boater tilted low over one eye. In the dream, Susanna wore aquamarine voile trimmed with frothy blond lace. A silk-taffeta parasol shaded her face. The summer breeze loosened some tendrils of hair which blew lightly across her cheeks and nose and tickled the curve of her mouth.
The Boardwalk was alive with color and sound. From the newly opened Steel Pier Susanna could hear the strains of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” played by Mr. Sousa’s band, led by the March King himself. The beer gardens and cafes overflowed with gaily attired vacationers. Mingled aromas of steamed clams, hot buttered corn-on-the-cob, and foamy lager beer wafted enticingly on the balmy air.
Susanna breathed deeply of the familiar scents of summer and lifted a contented face to the benevolent sun, which cast a diamond-bright glow on the gently swelling sea. Offshore, yachts and stately sailboats glided by against a backdrop of dazzling water and crystal blue sky. In the surf, young men in woolen bathing costumes cavorted like sleek frisky porpoises, while on the beach, admiring them, stood proper young ladies in black flannel swim frocks and full-length black hose.
Then, suddenly, without warning, a sharp wind sprang up and ripped the parasol from Susanna’s hand. The parasol skittered down the Boardwalk, which was now ominously empty and silent. The bright blue skies darkened, a gray gloom displaced the sunlight, and the wind chilled Susanna like the icy hand of Death.
“Dallas!” she cried, alarmed.
But he was no longer with her. And when she looked out toward the ocean, a great swell of a wave was rushing shoreward, an engulfing tide of destruction from which she knew there was no escape.
Desperately she began to look for her brother. She had to find him, she had to protect him. Up and down the Boardwalk she ran, stopping at beer gardens and cafes, bath houses and concession stands, but all were empty and silent. Dallas was nowhere to be found.
“Dallas!” she cried again, then looked out toward the ocean. Frozen, helpless, she watched the wave surge relentlessly toward shore, knowing that nothing on God’s earth had the power to save her.
“Sunny, wake up!” Firm hands grasped her shoulders and shook her from her nightmare. “Sunny, wake up, do you hear me? You’re dreaming again.”
Her eyes flew open at the sound of her brother’s childhood name for her. He was bending over her, his eyes dark with concern. With a choked sob Susanna threw her arms around his neck. He was safe. Thank Heaven. It had only been a dream. But she trembled in his arms from the memory of her fear.
“Sunny, for God’s sake.” Dallas laughed softly, disentangled himself from her grasp, and eased her down against the pillows. “You’ve got to do something about those nightmares.”
The room was beginning to brighten with dawn light. Susanna looked up at her brother, at the hair curling boyishly on his brow, the weary brown eyes, the hard curve of jaw in which the faintest trace of youth could still be seen. How beautiful he was. Just like their mother. Except that Dallas, thank goodness, was nothing at all like his mother in character.
Augusta Sterling had abandoned the family when Susanna was thirteen and Dallas only ten. After the desertion, Susanna’s father had barely been able to look at the son who so much resembled the woman who had hurt him. And so Dallas’s upbringing had been left in Susanna’s capable hands.
She had cared for him as diligently as any parent, had reared him with discipline and love, chastising him when necessary, tenderly kissing away his outraged tears. He had been exasperating at times, naughty as a child, insolent as an adolescent, but even when Susanna was most angry with him she loved him, for she knew that the reason for his unruly behavior was the double wound of rejection that might never heal.
And yet, for all his troublesome nature, he could be heart-wrenchingly loving, like now, as he sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the tousled hair from her brow.
“Was it the tidal wave again?” he asked gently.
“Yes,” she murmured, loath to even think about it. “And I couldn’t find you again.”
“Maybe if you didn’t waste so much time looking for me, if you just saved yourself from the wave, the nightmare would go away.”
“If I could control the dream that way,” she said with a shudder, “I’d just will myself not to have it.”
“There’s a simple explanation for it,” Dallas said sensibly. “Don’t you remember the nor’easter we had year before last? The waves were gigantic. The meadows were blanketed with sea water. You’re probably reliving that time in your dreams, remembering how scared we all were on the island.”
“You’re probably right.” She didn’t sound convinced. But as the sounds of the hotel staff performing their early morning duties reached her ears, the dream began to
recede, and more practical thoughts filled her mind.
“It’s late.” She rose and slipped on a dressing gown. “I have a million things to do today.”
Dallas went to the window and glanced out at the eerie fog. “It looks like limbo out there,” he said.
It was then that Susanna noticed that he was in full evening attire. “Dallas,” she reproached him, “you’ve been gambling all night at Dutchy’s again.”
He turned from the window, slipped his hands into his trouser pockets and gave her a furtive look. “Well...yes,” he said, not mentioning that he had also spent a considerable part of the evening at May Woodston’s brothel. “In fact, that’s why I’m here now. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Susanna sighed and thrust her feet into a pair of slippers. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “You owe Dutchy some money.”
“Not exactly.” He watched her as she sat down at the vanity table and began to brush out her hair in short impatient strokes. “Sunny, listen to me, please.”
Her eyes met his in the mirror. His look of appeal alerted her. Dallas’s habitual gambling, his love for good liquor and bad women were constant sources of contention between brother and sister. But a sixth sense told Susanna that something far more serious than a gambling debt was troubling Dallas this morning.
She put down the hairbrush and turned worriedly to face him. “What’s wrong?”
Dallas sat on the edge of the bed, one foot tucked under his leg, the other swinging nervously. Despite his soigné attire, he suddenly looked much younger than his years.
“I’ve really done it this time.” He avoided her searching gaze. “I’ve signed away my half of the hotel.”
“What?” The word was a gasp. “Did you say—?”
“Yes.” He couldn’t look at her. “I’ve been playing Faro every night for the past week with some people from New York. They were playing for high stakes. Dutchy warned me to stay out of the game, but I owed him six hundred dollars. I thought I could win what I owed, and maybe some more besides.”
