The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (89 page)

Claire understood now why he’d seemed so amused about her opening a tearoom: He hadn’t been making fun of her; he’d been indulging in a bit of wishful thinking.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me.” He held her gaze, and she saw in his eyes no pity for himself, either. “Anyway, as you can see, I haven’t given it up completely.” He glanced about with the look of a man who, if not 100 percent satisfied with his lot in life, had more or less made peace with it.

“Are you going to sell it?”

He nodded, running a hand along the rail, as if any profit would be beside the point. “What would I do with a boat? Unless you’d like to sail off to Tahiti with me.” He broke into a wide grin.

He’d only been teasing, but she felt herself stiffen slightly. “Hold that thought,” she answered lightly. “If I go bust, I just might take you up on it.”

He looked down at his feet, then back up at her, shyly almost. “Would you consider something a little less drastic in the meantime?”

“Like what?”

His expression grew serious. “I was thinking of something along the lines of an exclusive relationship.”

Claire’s heart began to pound, and she dropped her gaze. “I can’t. You know that.”

“I guess what it comes down to,” he said softly, but firmly, “is that you have to decide which one of us it’ll be—him or me.”

“What if I
can’t
?”

She looked up to find him rubbing his jaw pensively, more like a man considering his options than one about to get hurt. “You’ve always been straight with me. I appreciate that. And I knew it was serious with this guy Byron, so that’s on me. But we can’t go on like this—just playing house. I’m running out of things to fix.”

Panic seized her. “Please, Matt. Don’t do this.”

“Do what?” Matt stared at her, his mouth hard. “Hell, woman, I want to
marry
you.”

All at once she felt as if she’d been torn from her bearings. “Oh, Matt.” She brought her hand to her mouth. “I never thought—”

“To tell the truth, neither did I. It sneaked up on me, too.”

She was shaking her head, pressing so hard with her knuckles she could feel her teeth cutting into the underside of her lip. “You don’t understand. Byron and I … we’ve been together since we were kids.”

His gaze wouldn’t let go. “I’ll accept that … if you tell me you’re not in love with me.”

Claire couldn’t bring herself to say it. If she told him no, it would be a lie. But how could she be in love with two men at once? “I can’t.” The words emerged in a cracked whisper.

Matt looked down at his hands, at a scrape on his knuckles that hadn’t quite healed. When he brought his gaze back to her, she saw that his eyes were bright with unshed tears. His voice, though, was firm with resolve. “The only nice thing my wife ever had to say about me was that I was a one-woman man. I’m not interested in another man’s leftovers. I’m not built that way. If you can’t choose, I guess this is good-bye.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

She thought of Byron. Breaking up with him would be like severing a limb. She couldn’t do that to herself … or him. But could she be without Matt? It wasn’t just the sex. She’d miss his voice in the next room, the sight of him across from her at the table, and the little ways he stuck up for her—like with the buildings inspector who’d insisted on addressing Matt as if
he
were the owner, as if a woman didn’t count, until Matt had turned to him and said with a twinkle in his eye, “You’ll have to ask the lady of the house. She might not look it, but she understands English.”

How could she let him go? How could she bear not seeing him again?

“I’ll miss you,” she said softly.

Matt’s red-rimmed eyes fixed on her with an intensity that seemed to burn into her flesh. Then he was rising heavily to his feet, and swinging one leg over the bow before jumping nimbly to the ground. Looking down at him, at his head tilted back and his arms raised to help her down, she had the oddest feeling that the boat was no longer on solid ground, that it was slipping out to sea.

“T
HAT WAS FUN.”

Gerry glanced in surprise at Andie in the rearview mirror—no, she wasn’t being sarcastic—and smiled. “It was, wasn’t it?”

The ache in her chest eased ever so slightly. She would survive. How much could you miss a man you hadn’t even known you were in love with until now? Even so, watching him go had been one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do. Would she see him again … or be left with only his music? Lazy afternoons lying on the sofa listening to Beethoven while picturing him on a podium somewhere: dreaming aloud of Isabelle.

Tears blurred her vision, sending brilliant star points shooting from her headlights into the darkness on either side of the steep, winding road. She blinked, and everything sharpened back into focus. She saw that they were heading into a hairpin curve and eased up on the accelerator.

“That girl is a Fitzgerald, no doubt about it,” said Mavis, buckled in beside her. “She has my mother’s light touch. Your great-grandmother,” she turned to address the kids, “was famous all over the county. People used to say you hadn’t lived until you’d tasted one of Fiona Fitzgerald’s currant scones.”

Gerry braced herself.
Uh-oh. Here we go again. Another reminder of how the famous Fitzgerald touch skipped over me, and how I can’t boil an egg to save my life.

But Mavis’s mind was clearly elsewhere as she gazed out the window, a small remembering smile on her lips. This wasn’t about her, Gerry realized. It was about Claire and the light touch she’d brought to more than just the kitchen. They’d all felt it. Mavis, who was once more fully engaged in the business of living. Justin, except for his little sulk over Aubrey, happier than she’d ever seen him. Even Andie seemed more at ease, though that probably had to do with her being back home. If she still resented Claire, there’d been no sign of it this evening.

“I wonder what Kevin will think when he sees it,” Gerry said.

Justin perked up. “Uncle Kevin’s coming?”

“For the opening yes.” Kevin had confirmed it the other night. “He told me his pastry chef just walked out. I made him promise not to try to steal Claire.”

“She wouldn’t leave us, would she?” Justin sounded worried.

“Of course not. I’m only kidding.” Gerry glanced at him in the rearview mirror, wondering why she felt so sure. Maybe because it was her heart, not her head, telling her.

“I put flyers in all the papers on my route,” he said proudly. “I gave Laura the rest to hand out.”

Dear Laura, always the first to volunteer for a worthy cause. And after this evening’s feast, she’d be able to tout Tea & Sympathy from personal experience as well. A good thing, because Claire would need all the help she could get. Gerry knew from her friend Myrna McBride that even an event promoted to the high heavens could result in a small turnout. On the other hand, if books were food for the soul, they didn’t satisfy a sweet tooth. Tea & Sympathy would have The Last Word beat hands down there. Still …

“Claire’s going to need a lot of help these next few weeks,” she said.

“I can come after school,” Justin said excitedly. “Except the days I have Little League.”

“You’ll eat her out of house and home,” Andie teased.

Justin shot her a dirty look. “Mom, if Andie moves back in to Dad’s, can I have her room?” It was a running argument between them that Andie’s room was the bigger of the two.

“Don’t be fresh,” Mavis scolded, though her heart clearly wasn’t in it.

“Your sister’s not going anywhere.” Gerry sneaked another glance at her daughter. Andie had her window partway down and with the breeze blowing her dark curls about her face, she might have been Merle Oberon in
Wuthering Heights,
poised atop a crag, pining after Heathcliff. Her little girl. When had she grown up?

Andie’s eyes met hers in the rearview mirror, her lips curved in an answering smile. No, she wasn’t going anywhere, at least not for the time being, though Gerry knew that her days as Andie’s caretaker were numbered. The thought made her sad.

“Aunt Sam is getting big,” Andie remarked.

“I was even bigger with you,” Gerry told her.

“I hope it’s a boy.” Justin spoke with the wistfulness of someone one player shy of a team.

“How come you’re not throwing her a baby shower?” Andie wanted to know.

“She wouldn’t let me.”

“Why not?”

“Superstition—she was afraid it’d jinx things.”

“I seem to recall her having showers when she was expecting Alice and Laura,” Mavis said.

“She said it was okay then because she was younger.”

“What in heaven’s name does that have to do with it?”

Gerry shrugged. “I asked her the same thing. She said I should try having a baby at this age, then I’d know.”

Andie’s eyes widened in horror. “You
wouldn’t
.”

“Not on your life.” Gerry laughed. “I’m holding out for grandchildren.”

Andie looked panicked for some reason.

“I still think it’s a shame,” Mavis clucked as they wound their way up Oak Creek Road. Not their usual route—a detour due to construction. “People are so excited about this baby. It’s like … well, like a sign of something. Hope, I guess. We’re all being reminded that it’s never too late to start over.”

Not everyone shared that enthusiasm. Gerry recalled Marguerite Moore’s attempt to oust Sam as president of the music festival committee last year. She’d been voted down unanimously. It seemed Sam had more friends in the community than Marguerite did.

“We’ll throw a party afterward,” she said. “Though this baby will need more than ten fingers and ten toes for all the stuff you’re knitting it, Mom.”

Gerry rounded a sharp curve, her headlights illuminating deep skid marks cutting in diagonal slashes across the graveled turnabout just ahead. The guardrail was badly buckled, and the bushes around it broken. An accident, and from the looks of it, a recent one.

Adrenaline sluiced through her in an icy rush, throwing everything into vivid Technicolor clarity.
Sam,
she thought. She and Ian had left a few minutes ahead of them, and would’ve taken the same route.
Dear God, don’t let it be them …

Gerry braked to a stop and jumped out. She caught the sickening smell of burnt rubber and saw streaks of paint on the guardrail.
Red
paint.

Sam’s Honda, she recalled, was red.

Her heart tipped over in her chest.

“Mom, what is it?” Andie and Justin spilled out of the backseat.

Gerry waved them back. “Stay put. I’m going to have a look.” It was all she could do to keep the panic from her voice.

She peered over the guardrail into the shadowy darkness of the ravine below. At first, all she could make out were bushes and scrub pines, their needles glinting silver in the glow of her headlights. Then she spied it at the bottom of the steep slope: a car lying on its side. The only thing keeping it from plunging into the creek below was the stout tree against which it was wedged. She didn’t have to see its make to know it was Sam’s.

Gerry’s breath left her and her heart seemed to hang suspended in her chest. Then in a flash she was vaulting over the guardrail, half scrambling, half sliding down the slope.

“Call 911!” she yelled up to the kids, whose faces peered whitely over the guardrail in the stark wash of her headlights.

The darkness seemed to rush up at her as she skidded several more yards in a hail of loose dirt and gravel. A memory surfaced: the fun house at the county fair. She’d talked Sam into going. They’d been what—ten, eleven? Sam, who even then had liked everything lined up and neatly squared, couldn’t get out fast enough, but Gerry had loved every minute of it—the undulating floor and zigzagging corridors, the mirrors that made her look fat then thin. Only now it felt as if
she
were the one thrust against her will into a place where nothing made sense, and where none of the corners met.

She cupped her hands around her mouth, calling, “Sam! Ian!”

No answer.

Please, God, don’t let them be dead.
She thought of the baby due in just two weeks. It wasn’t fair. Not after everything they’d been through. They had to be okay; they
had
to be.

Gerry lost her footing and skidded the rest of the way down, catching hold of a low-hanging branch just in time to keep from tumbling over the creek’s steep embankment. She landed on her backside with a jolt a few dozen feet from the overturned car—a Honda.

She lost it then, shrieking,
“Sam!”

The open door to the driver’s side was sticking straight up like a hatch, the bushes around it broken and flattened as if someone had crawled out. She clambered onto the sharply angled running board, getting that creepy fun-house feeling again as, holding herself braced with one hand on the doorframe and the other on the steering wheel, she peered into the shadowy recesses of the front seat. A figure was slumped against the passenger door at the far end: Sam.

Gerry’s mouth went dry and she uttered a small, choked cry that was more of a whimper. She unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth long enough to cry, “Sam!
Sam
!”

She heard a groan, but it was coming from behind. Gerry jerked about so suddenly she lost her balance and went tumbling into the dirt below. That was when she saw Ian, several yards away, his right leg cocked at an angle so unnatural it could only have been broken. She crawled over to him.

“Ian?” She touched his face. “Ian, are you all right?” She placed an ear to his chest, and felt it rise and subside. When she lifted her head, she saw that his lips were moving, and bent close to hear.

“Forget… me. Take care … of … Sam.”
His voice was so faint it might have been air whistling from his lungs. He tried to pull himself upright, then collapsed back with a moan. His jeans below the knee of his painfully twisted leg glimmered darkly with blood. But he was alive. That was all that mattered.

He tried once more to sit up, but she gently forced him back. “Ian, listen to me. The ambulance is on its way. Just … don’t move …
please.
I’ll make sure Sam’s okay.” Her voice, steady and calm, seemed to be coming from somewhere outside her.