Flower Girl Bride (7 page)

“You see what I mean? I'm Sam's dad. I know him. I know the important things, like that he's afraid of the dark and daddy longlegs and that he has accidents if he doesn't go to the bathroom right before—”

“Oh, my gracious,” I interrupted him, already rushing for the stairs.

“Let me guess. He talked you into letting him get a drink.”

I'd climbed the first few steps, but I turned back to him, frowning. “No. Two.”

“Well, better join Noah and the animals in the ark because another great flood is coming.”

 

As it turned out, there was no sign of a second Noah or any animals traveling two by two. Sam wasn't even in his bed when I reached his room at a flat-out run. He'd made it back to the bed, given fair warning by my herd-of-buffalo approach, but the boy just couldn't manage to scramble under the covers before I threw the door wide.

I flipped on the light, crossed my arms and drew my eyebrows together, waiting.

“Did Daddy come?” His gaze darted to the side as he said it.

“You know he did, Sam.” I didn't add
you little stinker
to my comment, but I was too busy trying to replay my conversation with Luke. What had we said that might permanently damage a child? Some of it had stung even my pride, and I was technically an adult.

“I'm here, buddy.” Luke said from behind me. He didn't bother to call Sam on his stretch of the truth, and he didn't apologize for anything his son might have overheard, either. “It's late, though. You need to go to the bathroom, and then we need to get home.”

Funny, I don't know why, but I expected Sam to balk, to beg to stay another night and spend another day playing with me. So it surprised as much as stung me when he stood up on the bed and held out his arms for his father to take him. In three long strides, Luke was with him, but instead of lifting him immediately, Luke tugged at the sleeve of the oversize T-shirt, covered in tie-dyed frogs.

He glanced back at me. “Where are his clothes?”

“I washed them. You can take that home and return it later.”

“That's all right. Where are his things now?”

“In the dryer. I'll get them.” I hurried from the room as if he was chasing me. I didn't have to pretend I didn't understand why he needed Sam's clothes right away and didn't want to take mine: he didn't want any reason to come back here.

Once a sleepy Sam had taken a restroom break and was back in his own clean things, Luke gathered his son in his arms and strode down the hallway.

I followed after him. “It was great having you here, Sam.”

“Thank you,” the boy said, already snuggling sleepily into the comfort of his father's arms. They were at the bottom of the steps when Sam's head popped up again. “Tell Princess goodbye for me, okay?”

“I will.”

Luke glanced back at me, his silence speaking louder than his words ever could. Here I'd been trying to tell him how to care for his child, and we both knew I still hadn't mastered Pet Care 101.

I kind of hoped he would smile, would see the humor in the situation, even if I was having a hard time finding it myself. He didn't. Instead, he continued across the room to the slider, only turning back to me when his hand was on the door. “Thanks for spending the day with Sam.”

I cleared my throat. “It was my pleasure.”

He tapped the side of his head against Sam's mop of hair. “Say bye to Miss Cassie.”

“Bye, Miss Cassie.”

Sam lifted his hand for a sleepy wave and then let it fall back on his father's arm. His smile was the last
thing I saw as Luke carried him out the door. The sound of the slider clicking closed had a disconcerting finality to it.

After they disappeared around the side of the house, I stared out at the deck, its stained cedar planks golden in the artificial light. The wooden structure appeared larger now that it was empty except for a few groupings of tan and navy patio furniture. The laughter and smiles that had populated the deck and the rest of this house for the last several days were starkly absent.

But it was more than the empty house that made me feel so vacant inside. I missed the noise, the activity and the laughter that came with Luke Sheridan and his rambunctious son. After tonight, I would probably see neither of them again, and it was mostly my fault.

 

“How's my precious princess doing?”

I grinned into the portable phone Wednesday afternoon, only a little disappointed that it was an international call I'd answered rather than a local one. I shouldn't have expected any different. If Luke were going to call, he would have done it by now, instead of leaving me for the last two days to relax my body, bake my skin and generally go out of my mind with trying to avoid sessions of introspection. This was supposed to be a time for respite, not an episode of “Cassie Blake—This is Your Life.”

Though my grin had long since faded, I remained determined to stay cheerful. “How's your princess doing? That depends. Are you talking about me or the cat?”

“Both, of course.” Aunt Eleanor's laughter warmed
me, even through four thousand miles as the jumbo jet flies.

“But for now tell me about my kitty. Jack made me wait forever before I could check in with you.”

If that wasn't the definition of irony, I didn't know what was. This was the third time she'd phoned me since they'd left for Paris. If she called any more often, she would have to mortgage her mansion to pay the cell phone bill.

“She's fine. Really.”

Well, she wasn't dead. I knew that anyway. In fact, Princess was sitting in the doorway to my guest suite that minute, watching me chatting on the phone and putting away the rest of my clean laundry in the bureau drawers.

For a cat that despised me, she sure spent a lot of time watching me. That morning my heart had skipped a few important beats when I'd awakened to find her sitting on the end of the bed, just watching. But then didn't most of the big cats study their prey before they attacked?

Eighteen days and counting.

“Cassandra Eleanor, are you listening? I'm paying a pretty penny for all this dead air.”

I cleared my throat. “Oh. Sorry. Now what were you saying?”

“I asked if she was eating okay.”

“She's eating.” She hadn't exactly done it in my presence, but there did appear to be a good-sized dent in each little mound of food when I threw out the leftovers. That was proof as far as I was concerned, unless
an industrious ant colony had figured out a way to score three squares a day.

“Is she getting enough water?”

“Sure.” At least I hoped so.

“Have the two of you finally become friends?”

How was I supposed to answer that one without lying? I might have gotten out of the habit of attending church, but that didn't mean I didn't believe in the Ninth Commandment.

“We sure are getting to know each other better,” I said finally.
Whew, that was a close one.

“Wait,” Eleanor said. “You said ‘depends.' If Princess is fine, then what's the matter with you?”

Now that would be hard to determine without a team of counselors and a truckload of chocolate truffles thrown in for good measure. But I only said, “I'm fine, too.”

“Have you gotten any sun?”

“Yes, and I have enough freckles to prove it.”

“Not too much, right? You're wearing your sunscreen?”

“Always.”

“And a hat.”

“Sometimes.”

I smiled again. My aunt and I had shared many conversations like this one, and it was great to see that even an ocean couldn't stop her from mothering me.

“Have you seen any more of Sam this week?”

My breath hitched. She was good, my aunt. She'd started a fishing expedition, using Sam as the lure and not even mentioning Luke. Well, I could be a slippery fish when I wasn't in the mood to be caught.

“Sam had a sleepover here. We had a great time.”

“Oh really,” she said in a tone that convinced me I was dangling from a hook even as we spoke.

“What are you saying?”

“I'm just surprised Luke let Sam stay over. He doesn't usually let anyone get close to his son. He doesn't appreciate everyone's well-meaning advice, either. Even Yvonne has learned to keep her opinions on parenting to herself unless Luke asks for them.”

Well, that little tidbit had arrived a few days too late to help me at all. “Oh,” I said before I could stop myself.

“What does ‘oh' mean? Did Luke tell you to mind your own business, too?”

“Of course not.” No, not in so many words.

“Look, Aunt Eleanor, Luke is a nice enough man, and if I were in the market…”

I let my words fall away. If I were in the market, what? Would I have been completely intrigued by him? Would I have been equally disappointed he hadn't called? As I was now, for example.

“But you're not in the market.”

“No, I'm not.”

She took that blow to her matchmaking plans with much more aplomb than I expected. If such a thing were possible, I would think my aunt had overdosed on aplomb today.

We said our goodbyes, and I hung up the phone, casting the house into its strange summer silence again. It was too late in the day to hear the warblers singing and too early for the cicadas to begin their noisy nighttime dance.

Why I had ever looked forward to three weeks alone
in the sun and sand, I couldn't say. The Lake Michigan water was too cold in June to soothe my soul. The sand between my toes only chafed my skin, and running across the beach in the heat of the day felt like a barbecue for toes. Even the sunsets—okay, the sunsets were beautiful enough to convert an atheist and give him the call to the ministry the same day, but that was beside the point.

So what was the point, that I hated being alone? No, that couldn't be it. I was a veteran of
aloneness
. To the outsider, I probably made it seem downright festive. I just missed activity, I guessed. The sheer busyness of my life had served as wonderful insulation from thoughts and feelings, and here without it, I felt exposed.

Now don't get me wrong. I'd fought off this need to look inward the best I could. I'd watched Elvis in
Blue Hawaii
and Sidney Poitier in
To Sir, with Love
—two of my absolute favorites.

I'd also caught up all the laundry, dusted, vacuumed and cleaned all the bathrooms, even the ones I'd had to traipse around the place to locate. My aunt's wood blinds, the ones that filtered some of the morning sun on the east-facing windows, had probably never been as clean as they were after my attack with first the feather duster and then the lemon oil.

No wonder Princess just followed me from room to room, watching me perform like a domestic goddess and Olympic speed skater all rolled into one, but a gal had to do what a gal had to do.

I was running, all right. I had to if I planned to stay ahead of this sense that God was using this silence, this
water, this place to make me take an internal inventory. Was this how Jonah felt when he was avoiding God's command to work in Nineveh? Would I end up in a whale's belly, too, if I didn't stop running?

Okay, I'd lost it after all. Just the image of me sitting in a puddle of whale digestive juices waiting to be spit back out made me grin. There wasn't a whale to be found in Lake Michigan, and a forty-pound salmon might try the whole swallowing thing, but he wouldn't get the job done.

All kidding aside, there was only so much more of this I could take. If I had to stay here alone one more day, I probably would have to give in and listen to what God had to say.

B
y late Friday night, I lay spent on one of the padded deck chairs, my bare feet heavy on the wood decking and a floppy hat pulled low on my face to block out any light, natural or otherwise.

I almost wished I could have found one of those imaginary Lake Michigan whales. I already felt as if I'd been swallowed and spit back up, and I hadn't even gotten a water ride out of it. Self-examination was exhausting. A warning should have been posted on the whole activity: Not recommended for the faint of heart.

There was nothing like having a clear villain and a clear victim in a drama and discovering that, oops, the victim wasn't guilt-free. But this wasn't a purse snatching or a random act of violence. It had taken two of us to make our marriage and two to break it.

Not that I was ready yet to divide the responsibility fifty-fifty with my ex-husband or anything. I wasn't the one who'd played musical beds and made procreation an extramarital party game. But I had chosen my
husband for all the wrong reasons: why would I want boring qualities like honesty, reliability or a strong faith when I could have a man who was as ambitious as I was and a whole lot more charismatic? She who sows weeds, reaps—surprise, surprise—weeds.

I'd had weeds, all right, big, gnarly weeds with thorns and the smell of decay to boot. That I'd had a part in making them grow shamed me.

“Dear God,” I said aloud, beginning another of my stilted prayers that I'd been attempting for the last forty-eight hours. “You know me…well, you used to anyway. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. We haven't talked in a while, but—I don't know what to say to…”

I let my words trail off. I had no idea what to say to the God of the Universe, my God with whom I'd once shared such a comforting intimacy. Until now, I hadn't realized how much I'd missed that closeness and what had always felt like two-way conversations with Him.

“I want that again, Father,” I whispered, pushing back my hat and sitting up in the seat. Already, dozens of stars sparkled in the sky that was deepening to a blue-violet. Out of my peripheral vision, I recognized the outline of the lighthouse, casting its own triangular spray of light in various directions.

When I'd first arrived, I'd found the lighthouse majestic, but now I had to reserve that word for the night sky, enormous and unencumbered by jutting man-made structures. With spots of light that spattered across that ever-darkening backdrop, God had provided safe passage for those who traveled by water long before the first brick of Bluffton Point Lighthouse had been mortared.

The sky stretched on until it and the water touched at the horizon, just as God's love seemed to be touching me. He was here with me; I could feel it. I should have been chilly now that the sun was gone, but I was surrounded in warmth. God had been with me all along, I realized now. He'd just been waiting for me to notice.

 

I was sitting in the dark, more at peace with myself than I'd been in months when the phone rang to fracture the silence. As tired as I'd been, I hadn't even remembered to bring the portable phone outside with me, so I had to run inside to answer it.

“She must be getting desperate now,” I told a disinterested Princess as I passed her on my way to the kitchen extension. What time was it in Paris? I counted off the six-hour time difference. Aunt Eleanor was calling at three o'clock in the morning?

I flipped on the handset and spoke before my aunt had the chance. “Shouldn't you be in bed?”

“I guess, but I usually try to stay up at least a few hours after I tuck Sam in.”

The next snide remark I'd intended to give to my pet-loving aunt caught in my throat. “Luke?”

“Expecting someone else?” His voice had taken on a tone I didn't recognize.

If didn't know better, I would have thought I'd heard a note of disapproval in his voice, as if he wasn't happy to think I'd had been expecting someone else's call. Though my ears were probably just ringing from an overdose of self-examination, I couldn't help being pleased by the thought.

“I figured it was Aunt Eleanor calling again, checking in on her beloved cat.”

“Again?”

“Since she left, she's called more frequently than a telemarketer offering a great deal on long distance.”

“That often, huh?”

“That often.”

Maybe I should have asked Luke why he'd phoned now when four nights ago he couldn't get away from me fast enough, but that would only make him hang up now. That was the last thing I wanted him to do. I didn't want to analyze it, to pick apart why I wanted to spend more time with a man who'd already made it clear he wasn't interested in me. I just wanted to keep talking.

Only we weren't talking.

The silence stretched too long, and for the life of me I couldn't come up with anything clever to say. Should I ask how Sam was doing? No, Luke might think I was judging his parenting skills again.

How about mentioning his mother or my aunt? I shook my head. That would only make him remember a certain matchmaking scheme, and I didn't plan to go
there.
I might have been desperate for human interaction, but I wasn't a suicide conversationalist.

“How is the cat doing, anyway?” he said finally.

I shrugged as I pinned the phone between my ear and shoulder. Though that wasn't the subject I would have chosen, it was something. “We're both alive.”

“Alive is good.”

Sixteen days and counting.

Again, the silence hung heavily around me. What
was he waiting for, another apology from me? I was forming the best one I could come up with after the day I'd spent when he spoke again.

“Sam misses you.”

Now that I hadn't expected. “Oh.” I cleared my throat. Was this a test? Had Luke brought up Sam's name just to see if I would head off on another diatribe about how he should raise his son? “I…um…miss him, too.”

“He's been begging to see you every night this week.”

“That's sweet.”

“He's also been throwing terrible tantrums.”

“Oh,” I said again. Forget suicide conversationalist, when had I lost the ability to speak in full sentences? I was a speech path, of all things. How was I supposed to help students with their fluency disorders when I couldn't string more than two syllables together myself? Would my parents think they'd wasted all that college tuition money if they could see me now?

“I promised him if he could behave for one night, I would call you and we would try to see you this weekend.”

I didn't even bother answering this time because whatever I said would probably sound curiously like “oh.”

“I know what you're thinking. I'm a lousy parent, bribing my kid just so I can get him to go to bed.”

“You don't know what I'm thinking.” If he did know, he'd realize I still hadn't gotten past the part where he'd mentioned seeing me again. And if he could see me
right now, he'd see how ridiculous I looked patting my hair into place when we were only talking on the phone.

“But bribing is lousy parenting,” he continued. “You know that's true.”

“The truth is, you know how little I know about parenting.” I took a deep breath and added, “You made that clear the other night.”

“Maybe you haven't been a parent, but you've had a lot of experience with kids, and you've helped plenty of them.”

“Thanks for saying that.”

“Why? It's just the truth.”

I cleared my throat, embarrassed as much as flattered by his praise. He was right; everything he'd said about me was true, and yet his words validated my work in a way that the ambitious professional goals that Alan and I shared never had.

“Cassie, I'm really sorry about the other night.”

Just like everything else about this conversation, I hadn't expected an apology from him. “No, I'm the one who should be sorry.”

“Fine. It's a tie.”

I smiled into the receiver. “Yes. Let's make a truce.”

“That calls for a truce dinner. We can do it tomorrow. You provide the awesome lake house, and I'll bring the food and man the grill.”

“Well, that's one way of garnering an invitation,” I said with a laugh.

“My son had to get his lousy manners somewhere.”

“You go, Dad.”

But I wasn't offended, and he knew it. Over the next
few minutes we finalized plans for dinner. I even suggested that we make a day of it, just the three of us, so we could help Sam work on his swimming. Luke didn't sound all that enthusiastic when he agreed, but it was probably just my ringing ears again.

After ending the call, I hurried through what was already becoming my nighttime routine of locking up the house, scooping Princess's litter and putting out fresh water and food. I didn't waste time or water by running the faucet, and the cat didn't bother to sniff the food she would reject, anyway, until after I went to bed. At least female and feline could agree to disagree.

I crawled into bed, pulled up the lightweight comforter and waited for sleep to hit me like a bag of rocks. After a draining day like this one had been, I deserved some serious shut-eye. Twenty minutes later, though, I was still lying there, having counted all one hundred sixty-seven swirls in the plaster ceiling design and having given up on counting sheep because they were stampeding.

Why was I so keyed up, anyway? Tomorrow would only be another sunny afternoon with Luke Sheridan and his son. At least the forecasters predicted a sunny afternoon, which meant I had better find the galoshes and umbrellas just in case. But my uneasiness had little to do with the weather forecast, the predicted water temperature or even small-craft warnings. It had to do with the prospect of spending time with two special guys I'd been missing all week.

This was just silly, I decided as I flipped over, fluffed my pillow for the umpteenth time and buried my face
in the center of it. Maybe I should take this anxiousness or excitement or whatever it was as a warning that tomorrow wasn't such a good idea.

Was I becoming more involved with the Sheridan family than was wise? If I had any sense at all I would call Luke back, wish him well and say a quick goodbye. That would probably be best. Fast goodbyes just weren't polite, though, and no one could accuse me of being impolite. Mom had taught me well. So the decision was made: I would see the Sheridan guys as planned. No one would accuse me of having any sense, either.

 

“Watch this, Miss Cassie.”

At the bottom of the deck steps, I turned to look back at the beach. Sam was still crouched next to the sand castle village he and I had spent the last hour building. He stood and, with the handle of his pail in one hand and a red shovel in the other, spun in low-flying helicopter fashion, whacking all of our best towers as he went.

“Smack! Crash! Boom!”

I waited until his sound effects were finished before commenting on his work. “Boy, you tore all that down faster than we could build it.”

“I'm really strong.”

“You sure are. Sand castle villagers beware.”

When he started spinning again, sending sand flying in all directions, I hurried for cover, continuing up the steps. On the deck, Luke stood next to a stainless steel gas grill wider than my car and with enough side
burners and other gadgets that it should have marinated, cooked and served the meat all by itself. That little toy was probably my uncle's pride and joy.

Luke appeared right at home as master of the barbecue, wearing a gaudy Hawaiian shirt open over his T-shirt and a red half apron tied loosely over his swim trunks. He topped the ensemble off with a MSU baseball cap, worn backward, and dark sunglasses. The whole getup should have been ridiculous, but somehow he made the look work for him. Who was I kidding? Luke Sheridan could show up wearing a pink tutu and a tiara and still come off looking unusually handsome and utterly masculine.

“What are you smiling at?”

I pressed my lips together, trying to stop, but that just made me want to laugh. How was I supposed to answer his question? Even if I avoided the whole tutu subject, I couldn't mention how pleased I was that I'd ignored my misgivings and hadn't canceled our date.

Date? This certainly didn't qualify as one unless the definition had changed since the last time I was single to include a miniature chaperone, but I couldn't help wishing a little. Who knew the next time I'd meet someone who could make a blue Hawaiian shirt with huge white daylilies splattered all over it work the way Luke did.

“Okay. Keep your secret. See if I care.”

I answered him with an exaggerated shrug. “Too much sun, probably.” That was true, too, and Aunt Eleanor would have been disappointed to see I wasn't even wearing a hat. My hair was flying around like a
mop of straw, and it would probably take a rake to detangle it by bedtime.

“Did you have fun building sand castles?”

“Sure, but I think I know how architects feel after a natural disaster.”

Luke chuckled. “I just had a nice visit with Princess. I gave her lunch by the way. And she took a nice long drink from the faucet.”

My frown must have spoken volumes because he laughed again. “She's still not performing her tricks for you?”

“Except the hissing one, no.”

He shrugged. “She looks healthy enough, so she's not starving or anything. As long as she's using her litter box, then she's doing just fine.”

“That's what I figured.”

“Don't worry. You'll grow on her, sooner or later.”

“Fifteen days and counting.” I didn't realize I'd said my daily affirmation aloud until he looked back at me and tilted his head to the side.

“What's that?”

“It's the number of days until I'm outta here.”

“I see” was all he said, and I didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. He didn't appear to be upset that I wouldn't be here long, but the fact that I wished it bothered him wasn't a good sign.