Cinderella Search (20 page)
Authors: Judy Griffith; Gill
“You got it,” Reggie said, and Lissa glanced in at Steve, who was shaking with laughter.
“My princess,” he said, jumping out and joining her at the back of the carriage, leaning his weight into it. “Will you ever let me slay a dragon for you?”
“Not likely,” she said, puffing as the carriage made its slow way to the top of the hill and out of the park. “But maybe we can knock off a few together.”
Anchored near the shore in Gowland Harbor, not far from home, but far enough away that she felt a world apart from everyone she knew, Lissa lay curled against Steve’s warmth on an air mattress on deck. Beneath them, the boat rocked gently. Above them, the stars wheeled lazily.
His hand moved lazily over her bottom, lingered on her tattoo. “You know, I’d figured that when I finally saw it up close, I’d find a butterfly. I should have known. Who but my Lissa would have a hornet tattooed on her rear?”
“It’ll only sting you if you don’t behave,” she said.
“Like this?”
She squirmed in pleasure. “It’s a start.”
But that, it seemed, was all it was. Steve wanted to talk. “Your dad said something,” he murmured.
“My dad said lots of things.” She raised herself on an elbow and looked down at him. “But you didn’t. Why didn’t you tell me right away Loretta was your mother? Why didn’t you tell me why she came here?”
“It’s what Frank wanted. He knew he had to free you from what you saw as an albatross, but until he was sure he could do it, he didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
“He knew that no matter how I griped and complained, I’d never leave him, or the inn, in the lurch.”
“Exactly, and he wants you to have whatever kind of life you choose. But that thing he said, about grandkids …” He traced her eyebrows with one finger. “What do you think about that, Lissa?”
She grinned. “I wouldn’t mind having a couple of grandchildren someday.”
He laughed and pulled her down across his chest. “But you know what you have to do first, don’t you?”
“No.” She managed to sound mystified. “What?”
He told her and she sat up, pretending shock. “You mean it? That’s where grandkids come from?”
“’Fraid so. So, what about it? That is, if you’ll accept an unemployed diver as their father.”
“I’ve been thinking about your unemployed state,” she said. “How would you feel about becoming a partner in a marine-cruise business?” She grinned. “I drive, you dive.” He’d only sulked for a few minutes when she refused to let him run her boat.
“I’m sure we can work something out. But I’d rather talk about those grandkids and what we have to do first in order to get them.”
“Well, if it’s the only way,” she said. “I guess I don’t have much choice.”
“I’m so glad you said that,” he told her. “Because we’ve already taken one chance, and I wasn’t sure you’d want to take another one.”
“I’d take all kinds of chances with you.”
“Good. Because we’ve used up everything in that box your friend gave you, and since I didn’t know we’d be leaving port, I didn’t do anything about it.”
“Hmm,” she said a few minutes later. “When do you plan to do something?”
“About what?”
“About me. About my needs, which are growing needier and needier by the moment, sailor.”
He took her hand and slid it down between them. “No more than mine, princess.” He kissed her long and hard and deeply.
“Hey, look after those lips.”
“I think they’ve healed,” he said. “Love me, Lissa. Now.”
“Now,” she agreed. “And forever.”
Dear Readers,
I have to tell you how much pure joy I took in writing this story, because it could have been my own. I, too, grew up in a small, close-knit coastal community where—at least most of the time—people pulled together to make things happen that would benefit everyone.
In my community, when the population grew to the point that the local school was too small for anything but classes, the citizens knew they needed a hall to hold dances, bake-sales, weddings and funerals. A logging company for which some of the men in the community worked, was about to shut down one of its camps. It being impractical to move them, some of the wood-frame buildings were to be abandoned. The community got together and bought one of them for a token dollar, to keep things all nice and legal.
It was too large to be moved in one piece, so the men of the community took chain saws and cut it in half, winched its two halves from its location and loaded it onto two rafts, which were towed forty miles along an inlet to the place I grew up. There, others had prepared a foundation of sorts, and the big empty shells were hauled up a steep bank by a gasoline powered winch, known in the logging industry as a “donkey.” They were set onto the new foundation, jockeyed into position with Gilchrist jacks (used primarily for moving large trees in logging operations), leveled, and put together again. With a new floor, curtains on the windows, a kitchen that soon proved to be too small, the Community Hall became the gathering place for all. That was more than fifty years ago.
To this day, the Hall stands in the same place. As I write this, thanks to a great many fund-raisers in which everyone participated, newcomers and old-timers alike, a new foundation is being built on which the hall will rest—possibly for another fifty or so years as it did on the first one.
It was not in that community I found my prince charming, but in another, quite similarly close-knit, a military base where everyone knew everyone else and all pulled together bound by a common interest, protecting our country’s freedom. To follow my charming soldier-prince, I had to leave my Pacific coast wilderness, but always it was where my roots lay. Now it is where I now return every summer aboard our boat, listen at night to tugboats’ deep-throated engines rumbling by as they wait for the tide to calm for those few, precious moments between the “inward roaring” and “outward pouring” of the Skookumchuck Rapids in Sechelt Narrows
I dedicate this book, and the poem below, to my sisters, brothers, cousins and friends, to everyone who grew up in a small, happy community, and to everyone else who has ever wished they had.
Egmont
Drizzle falling, seagulls calling,
eagles wheeling o’er The Deep
Tugboats straining, barely gaming
in their struggle with the sweep of tide
Inward roaring, outward pouring
Demanding pace of nature’s giving.
We, the living, caught by tides of time
and place
See in dreaming, sunlight gleaming
on hills reflected deep below.
Is it real, this place we feel?
We seek, recall, but can we know
if mem’ries lie?
When we turned and left it all behind,
With living tasked,
We never asked—
Is Egmont just a state of mind?
(Judy Griffith Gill, following the death of her beloved father in 1976)
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1998 by Judy Griffith Gill
cover design by Connie Gabbert
978-1-4532-8090-4
This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
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