To the One I Love: That Old Familiar FeelingAn Older ManCaught by a Cowboy

by Emilie Richards

  “Now look,” Lacey said half an hour later, when Riley pouted over losing a checker to her. “I could pretend to let you win, but you don’t really want me to, do you? You’re already pretty good at this, and by the end of the day you might well be able to beat me fair and square.”

  “But I’m a little kid.”

  “You’re a very good checker-playing kid. But I’m still better than you are because I’ve been doing this longer. Okay? So let’s practice some more.”

  When they were challenged, their ability to concentrate was enormous. Even Matt was bleary-eyed by the time the boys lost interest.

  They ate supper by candlelight. Outside the storm roared, and they listened to radio reports on a portable Matt had set up in the dining room. Lacey used Matt’s mother’s brightest pottery and taught the boys how to fold cloth napkins into swans. She poured apple juice into Sandra Cavanaugh’s cheapest wineglasses and taught the boys how to make a toast.

  They were game, she had to give them that. They tried, even though it was clear that the storm was beginning to frighten them as much inside the house as it had frightened them outside it. Her heart went out to them. She and Matt had both explained that they would be perfectly safe, but the boys weren’t all that sure.

  “I know,” Lacey said, when Matt got up to clear the table. “You guys come in the family room, and I’ll draw you pictures of what a hurricane is and what it does.”

  While Matt stacked the dishes in the dishwasher, she took the twins through a simple but detailed explanation of low pressure systems, cyclonic surface wind circulation, how storms were divided into categories and the way they were given names to make communication easier. They inched closer to her every time the wind howled and the house shook. By the time she was concluding the lecture, they were almost on top of her.

  “I heard that during World War II the armed services meteorologists gave the storms the names of their girlfriends and wives. That’s when they began calling them by women’s names,” Matt said, joining them at the coffee table where Lacey had been drawing pictures to explain.

  “And sometime after your daddy and I were born, they switched to using men’s names, too. So someday there might be a Hurricane Riley or a Hurricane Roman.” Lacey dropped her pen and put an arm around each boy.

  “Hurricane Leslie sounds like Lacey,” Riley said with a shy grin. “Hurricane Lacey. Hurricane Lacey.”

  “She went through this house like a hurricane today, didn’t she boys?” Matt said. “Cleaning and cooking and doing the laundry.”

  “She made us clean!” Roman stuck out his tongue to no one in particular.

  “And don’t you like the way your room looks?” Lacey said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “This’s scary.” Riley leaned against her. “I don’t like the wind.”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Matt assured him.

  “I’m afraid, too,” Lacey said. “Even though I’m absolutely sure we’ll be safe. But it’s loud, and the rain sounds like someone’s throwing rocks at the roof.”

  Roman stuck his thumb in his mouth and leaned against her, too. “Yeah, ’xactly like that.”

  “Well, I’ve got good news. I heard another report while you guys were in here,” Matt said. “The storm’s turned again and it’s going to hit land farther west. Probably somewhere just east of New Orleans. So we’ll get rain and more wind for a while, but we’re safe as can be. By morning the sun may even come out.”

  Lacey felt sorry for Louisiana, but she wasn’t sorry the storm had turned away from the key.

  “I have something for you guys,” she said. “I bought you a book at the bookstore. It was one of my favorites when I was a little girl. Of course you might have it already.”

  “You bought them a book?” Matt said. “When, exactly?”

  “I can’t remember,” she said primly.

  “Ri-ght.”

  “What is it?” Riley said.

  “Where the Wild Things Are. Do you know it?”

  He shook his head. “Uh-uh.”

  She made a mental note to examine their so-called preschool from top to bottom. “Would you like me to read it to you?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Will you brush your teeth first, in case you fall asleep?” They had missed their nap today, and they were paying the price now, eyelids drooping and mouths curled in yawns.

  They considered. It took a while, but they agreed. Matt took them upstairs, and when they came down she offered him the book. “Do you want to do the honors?”

  “No. Lacey reads it,” Riley said sleepily. “It’s Lacey’s book.”

  She had moved one of the lanterns beside a recliner that doubled as a rocker. Without being asked the boys crawled up into her lap and cuddled against her.

  For a moment she was so overwhelmed she couldn’t open her mouth. Their solid little bodies against hers, the delicious smell of little boy, mint toothpaste and clean pajamas, was so comfortable, so natural, so wonderful, that she was paralyzed by the perfection of it all.

  She had to remind herself they were not her children.

  Not yet.

  She swallowed. Her eyes were moist. She blinked back something that felt remarkably like tears. “I think you’ll like Max,” she said. Her voice caught and she swallowed. “He gets into big trouble at the beginning of the story.”

  “I know how that feels,” Riley said. He laid his head against her shoulder. And to make a complete and perfect set, Roman did the same.

  “The wind already seems to be dying down,” Matt said. “The worst is over for us.”

  Before she met Matt in the hall Lacey tiptoed to the twin’s door and made sure their light switch was in the off position in case the electricity came back on. “Do you think they’ll sleep through the night?”

  “Unless the house blows away. Even then they might not wake up until they reach the land of Oz.”

  She wondered if anyone had thought to read the Oz books to the boys. They were more than ready for them. She would check tomorrow.

  She closed the door behind her, but left it cracked just in case they did wake up. “Poor little guys. They’re completely done in. They were pretty worried there for a while.”

  “You didn’t give them much time to be worried. They’ve never been that busy in their lives.”

  “I think that’s the secret for dealing with them. Keep them busy. Keep them out of mischief.”

  “It’s not that simple.” He took her arm and guided her down the stairs the way he might have guided one of the twins.

  “Well, what’s your take on it?” she asked as he steered her into the living room.

  “The answer’s not busy work, that’s for sure. It’s respect.”

  She tried out the word, but she wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “Lacey, you showed the boys you respect them, and maybe that’s a new thing in their lives. You figured out what they were capable of, and you wouldn’t take less. You knew they could be helpful if someone showed them how to be, so you showed them, and they were. You knew they could thrive at complicated tasks, so you taught them some. You knew they could understand complex concepts, so you explained more about hurricanes than they would learn in Meteorology 101 at Yale.”

  “Well, I took Meteorology 101 at Columbia, and I figured it had to come in handy for something. But I didn’t know what else to do. The poor little guys were scared of hurricanes. Usually we’re more scared if we don’t understand something.”

  “And you bought them a book they’d identify with.” He shook his head. “Where the Wild Things Are. I can’t believe I’d forgotten that one. It was one of my favorites, too.”

  “I figured they’d identify with Max. After all, I did send them to bed without their lunch last time I was here.”

  “Do you remember what you said just a second ago?”

  She frowned and waited for him to repeat it.

  “You said that usually we’re more scared
if we don’t understand something.”

  “I guess I did.”

  “I’ve been scared to death.”

  Her heart was beating faster now. “Have you?”

  “Scared I was going to lose you and not at all sure I understood why. But I’m not going to lose you, am I?”

  She reached for his hands. “No.”

  “That stuff about home-baked cookies and total acceptance. You’re finished with that now?”

  “The twins kind of grow on a person, don’t they? Even a practical person like me who knows better.”

  “Like fungus.”

  She smiled. “This was a good day, but we aren’t always going to have a hurricane holding them in check. We’re going to have to do some serious planning for their education and future. We have to present a united front, figure out rules they’ll have to live by and make them toe the line. And nobody can feel sorry for them ever again. It’s destructive and wasteful, and they deserve better.”

  “I assume you’ll put all this on a spread sheet and tack copies all over our house?” He tugged her closer.

  “I haven’t agreed to anything permanent.” She paused. “Not quite yet.”

  “What can I do to change your mind?”

  “Well, you could try to do what we couldn’t do that day on Treasure Island. I don’t think any boats are going to sail by tonight.”

  His voice dropped a scale or two. “Making love in a hurricane? That works for me.”

  She laughed a little, excitement building. She felt nervous and expectant and dazzled, all at once. “After all this time apart what wouldn’t work for you?”

  “Kiss me.”

  She’d been afraid he might not ask. She had very nearly lost him and lost their love, too, that silly, impossible, hot-summer-nights love that had glowed through the darkness of the intervening years.

  She did kiss him. She went into his arms the way she had at eighteen. Hungry, yearning, and so ready to be his. His hands splayed open-fingered at her hips, gripping her, as if she’d sail off on the wind if he let her go. She filled her hands with his hair and kissed him harder.

  They were breathing fast by the time they made it upstairs again, stumbling and stopping to kiss and hold each other, but the clothing flew once they closed his bedroom door behind them, and Matt lit a single candle at the bedside. Her clothes landed in a heap and she kicked them aside, standing naked in front of him for the first time and not feeling even a trace of shyness.

  She had seen him in the darkness on the boat, and she vowed that next time she would see him in full sunlight. On Treasure Island, perhaps, at last. But even in the candlelight, his naked silhouette sent her pulse racing faster.

  They fell on the bed, touching, kissing, again, but this time moving until they were one at last. She moaned at the absolute rightness of this, and she was glad that they had waited until now, so that she could savor, at least for a moment, the first time she and Matt became lovers. He gazed down at her, smiled his mysterious, sexy smile, and began to move.

  Outside the storm continued to howl, but inside the storm ended in a fury of pleasure.

  Best of all, no boats sailed by.

  At last they lay together, cuddled hip to hip, skin damp and overheated. The bed was rumpled. She would make it later. Much, much later.

  “Worth waiting for,” Matt said at last.

  “Really?”

  “Really? No. To be honest it makes me sorry that we had to wait. We missed a lot of nights of this.”

  “We’ll make up for lost time.” She nipped his shoulder lightly. “Are you going to marry me?”

  “I thought you weren’t ready for permanent.”

  “That was before. This is after.”

  He laughed. “Name a date. Sometime in the next month would be good.”

  “I want to buy Grammer’s house. It’s big enough for offices for both of us and plenty of room for the boys.”

  “Are you on the pill?”

  She lifted to look at him. “We didn’t use protection, did we? That was irresponsible. That’s not like me.”

  “There’s room at your grandma’s for at least one more little body.”

  She lay back and stared at the ceiling. She had never, in her whole life, been careless about sex. She realized she hadn’t been careless this time, either. She wanted Matt’s baby. She just hoped she had some time with the twins, first, to shore up their relationship. She still needed practice at this mothering thing.

  She would get books, join parenting groups, research on the Internet.

  “I love you,” he said. “We’re going to be happy. I promise.”

  She knew he was right. He needed her, and the boys did, too. She needed them. How much more practical or down-to-earth could she be?

  “I love you, too,” she said, raising his hand to her lips and kissing it. “I never stopped. As hard as that is to imagine.”

  “You came back, I took one look at you, and I realized it, too.”

  “We really owe tonight to you, don’t we?”

  He propped himself on an elbow and looked down at her. “I thought you were pretty involved.”

  She punched him lightly. “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t. Tell me.”

  “I’m talking about the letter.”

  He frowned a little. “Did you write me a letter? I didn’t get one.”

  “Well, I got one. Or rather one was delivered to Grammer’s the morning after I saw you at Wallace’s.”

  “Is someone else cutting in on me? Someone else is sending you love letters?”

  She gazed into his eyes and saw that he really didn’t know what she was talking about. “I guess the letter wasn’t for me after all,” she said. “It must have been for Deanna or Marti, but it sure started me in the right direction.”

  “I wish I’d thought about writing you a love letter. I would have written a hundred if I thought we’d end up like this.”

  She smiled. “It doesn’t matter. We ended up like this anyway, didn’t we?”

  “Let’s not call it an ending. Let’s call it a beginning.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest.

  “I like that better,” she whispered. Just before he kissed her again.

  AN OLDER MAN

  Allison Leigh

  For Emilie and Peggy, who made visiting Colman Key such a lovely treat.

  Thank you for the journey!

  Dear Reader,

  When I was invited to participate in this anthology, I was particularly delighted with the premise—a love letter gone astray. What fun! What a tantalizing mystery!

  Learning that I would be working with Emilie Richards and Peggy Moreland made my delight even greater. What a pleasure it has been learning about Grammer and her girls, about Colman Key and the people who live there. It’s been a constant journey of discovery and challenge, and now that the adventure is complete, I’ll miss the family we created—both the Colmans of Colman Key, and our trio of writers.

  I hope you find as much pleasure meeting the Colman women and the men who love them, and that you have half as much fun traveling the path to love with Marti and Devlin, as I did!

  Very best wishes,

  Chapter 1

  Dust motes clung to the air. Hovering, weightless sparkles in the light streaming through the small attic window. Realizing she was staring at the spots, had been staring at them for far too long, Marti Colman sighed and looked away from the beams of sunlight to the opened steamer trunk in front of her.

  Downstairs, her sisters and grandmother were probably still fluttering over that crazy letter that had appeared on the doorstep the previous day.

  To the one I love.

  Some things are meant to be, and we’re one of them.

  She shook her head, dislodging the lines of the letter from her mind, and reached into the trunk. The faintly yellowed tissue paper crinkled as she pushed yet another layer aside to reveal more treasures long tucked away by h
er grandmother. She carefully pulled the dress from the trunk, glancing at the piles of clothing on the floor on either side of her. Donate. Save. Keep for Lacey or Deanna to look through and have to make the same kind of decision when they did.

  She sighed again.

  It was her father’s fault that Grammer had to move away from the gracious Victorian that had been her home for longer than Marti had been alive. All because he thought Grammer was too old to live on her own.

  She pushed to her feet, lifting the dress as she rose. It unfolded, fabric whispering in the quiet attic. It was a beautiful dress, a barely-there pink silk. For all Marti knew, Grammer had worn it when she was being courted by her husband, Edward.

  She tried to pull an image of her grandfather to mind. They’d called him Papa and he’d died when Marti was seven. She remembered her father’s grim face from that time far more vividly than she remembered her stern grandfather.

  She sighed. The discard pile to her right was as high as her knees. The save pile to her left barely merited the term “pile.” But they had to do something with the clutter of items that had been stored in the attic for years. Grammer couldn’t take everything with her when she moved, and they couldn’t leave everything for whoever bought the house to deal with, either.

  It was easy to blame her tired edginess on the packing process. Easier than thinking it could possibly be related to anything—anyone—else.

  Some things are meant to be.

  It was only because of that darned anonymous letter that she was thinking these thoughts.

  It had to be.

  For weeks, she’d been able to get through the day without constantly thinking about him.

  She huffed at the mental lie and shook her head, stepping away from the mounds of clothes, books, antiques. A cracked cheval mirror stood on the other side of a wheelless stroller and Marti moved around until she could see herself. A smudge of dust on her nose. Her hair, neatly clipped up earlier that morning, half falling down around her sweaty face. She was a mess.

  She looked only slightly more bedraggled than—