by Lynne, Loni
He looked at Peter. The man questioned him with the simple word. “I’m fine. Shall we proceed to the ceremony? I think there is a back way into this building where we can avoid much of the media. Notify Drew to meet us in there.”
***
All week long Beth had run them ragged, and Dr. Moreland had finished up his end of term classes in Williamsburg early so he could help them. It was a good thing he did. By Tuesday, the day before Kenneth was to arrive, April didn’t have the energy she needed to keep up with her normal workload, much less the extra push Beth put on her. It took her hours to fall asleep, and once she did, she found it difficult to wake up.
Mourning James was the culprit. How could she have fallen so hard and fast for a man? She hadn’t felt this deflated and morose over her break up with Jason, and they had shared two years as a couple.
The morning of Kenneth’s arrival, Kings Mill was teeming with activity. The phones hadn’t stopped ringing as news of Kenneth Miles’s arrival had leaked out to the public. Like members of the Secret Service, they could neither confirm nor deny anything about him coming to Kings Mill or the donation until the actual ceremony in the historical courthouse.
April splashed water on her face again to help wake her up. The small mirror in the bathroom of the old building didn’t reveal her best self. She was supposed to represent the historical society. She’d played a big role in recent historical research. But she didn’t feel presentable. Her wan cheeks wouldn’t look good for the cameras. She tried to add a hint of pink lipstick to give them a fresh healthy glow but it only made her look washed out and pink. It was winter. She was in hibernation mode and moody. So it only figured her complexion would reflect dreariness.
“It’s about time you came out,” Beth scolded as she emerged from the bathroom. “Mr. Miles is in with the County Commissioners and Board of Directors right now. They’ll call us in soon.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Bob will be doing the introductions since he was the one to connect Kenneth with Kings Mill.”
April only nodded. This was the man she was supposed to have shared a celebratory dinner with five weeks ago. Had it only been five weeks? Lately it felt like forever since the night. It was ironic how everything came together in a neat circle. Fate was funny.
No, she didn’t believe in fate! She might believe in ghosts, but fate? How could she when nothing would bring James back to her. Where was fate now, James? She wanted to be angry and ‘fate’ was as good a scapegoat as any. She didn’t believe, so what did it matter.
She yawned and tried to stifle the embarrassing gesture as media from Washington D.C./Baltimore and even some national news agencies were milling about in the narrow lobby of the two hundred fifty year old building.
“What is wrong with you lately? Well, besides the obvious. You’re tired all the time and you look like death warmed over,” Beth asked quietly from the side of her mouth.
“Gee. Thanks.”
“Dr. Freelane, Dr. Branford, they’re ready for you now. Please follow me.” The publicity assistant escorted them to the side door to receive the large display check for the grant and greet the man of the hour.
“How do I look?” Beth paused, taking a deep breath and adjusting her new lime green suit.
“Well, you’re not tired, and you don’t look like death warmed over,” April mocked before she sighed impatiently. “You look fine. Let’s get this over with so I can go home and sleep.”
They stepped into the room. April followed a few steps behind. She smiled and walked in front of the reporters and cameras. Beth came to an abrupt halt halfway across the floor in front of the governor, mayor, aldermen, and county officials sitting up on their dais. Hearing Dr. Freelane’s gasp, she was afraid her friend was going to faint.
Dr. Moreland was doing the honors of introducing the two parties. April couldn’t see around Beth so she stood where she was. Bob announced her name as being an instrumental part of the James Addison research project. Her heart somersaulted at the mention of James’s name.
Don’t cry now, April.
Beth moved to the side. April pasted on her best fake smile for the cameras as Kenneth Miles stepped forward. Her heart literally stopped for a brief second as she looked up into familiar steel gray eyes. He brought her hand to his lips and brushed a kiss over her knuckles. “It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance, Dr. Branford.”
She swore the man standing before her was James. Everything about him was James incarnate. Every minute detail reminded her of James. Then—everything went black.
***
Her hand hurt. April tried to open her eyes but felt so weak. Why did her hand hurt? She opened her eyes half-mast and looked about. She was in a hospital room. Fresh flowers in a vase sat beside the bed on a bed tray, a Mylar balloon read Get Well Soon. She looked down at her left hand and saw a tube connected to a needle in her hand and a bag of saline IV solution on a computerized stand. A nurse was checking the instrumentation and changing the bag.
“It’s about time you woke up.” A blurry face leaned over her. “How are you feeling?”
“Ask me again in the morning.”
Confusion and disorientation warred within her as she tried to rouse herself from a lethargic fog. Her eyes came into focus. Dr. Moreland leaned over her, his smile warm and casual. Looking around she noticed the room was dark and still, except for the blinking lights from her IV monitor. The nurse smiled and said she’d be back to check on her in an hour.
Bob Moreland went to the window on the far side of the room and pulled back the heavy, institutional drape. Sunlight streamed in across him as he squinted at the blinding rays. “It is morning. Thursday morning to be exact.”
April tried to sit up, panic setting in. “You’re kidding?” She’d missed a full day?
Bob dropped the curtain, hurrying back to her side. “Easy! Easy now. Let’s not pull out your IV.”
“James, where’s James?” She mumbled. “I saw him—”
“James who? I’m not sure what you’re talking about, April.” Bob shook his head.
James, she was thinking of James and wondering why she thought she’d seen him. Her mind was so focused on him, his smile, his eyes, but it wasn’t him standing in the courthouse. Kenneth Miles, it had been Kenneth Miles she’d seen. Tears threatened to overwhelm her at the cruel irony. The man she’d feared meeting looked so much like her James. It wasn’t fair!
She didn’t care if they shared the same lineage. Kenneth Miles was supposed to be an old curmudgeon with a balding pate and an over-sized gut. That’s what she’d expected—not a virile man in his mid-thirties who looked exactly like James.
She could have dealt with the image she created. The shock of meeting him and the stunning resemblance was too much for her. It was as if James was there again, and she’d seen a ghost. Now she wished it had been. She felt like hell and didn’t want to think anything more about Kenneth Miles. He was not James Addison!
April lay back down, too weary to fight. “Why do I feel like crap? What is wrong with me? ”
“You mean besides being exhausted, undernourished, slightly anemic, dehydrated, and pregnant? Why nothing at all.”
Listing the ailments in her fog clouded brain, April didn’t hit on what Bob had said, immediately. Did he say pregnant? She was pregnant.
“Pregnant? Really?” She closed her eyes and tried to process the news but succeeded in only having tears seep from under her lashes. “No. Impossible!”
“According to the doctor, about a month or so along.” Bob quirked his brow, a small smile playing on his lips. “Who’s the lucky father?”
April sighed, shaking her head in disbelief, letting the tears fall. She didn’t give a damn anymore who saw her crying. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” She didn’t believe it, and she’d been there. Thinking about trying to explain James Addison’s reincarnation to Bob right now seemed impossible. She didn’t think she’d be able to tell him the whole story a
nyway. And how could she get him to believe she’d made love to a ghost?
She laughed at the idea. But the laughter wasn’t cathartic. Congratulations, James, your sperm is immortal.
“Are you laughing or crying, April?” Dr. Moreland grabbed a handful of hospital issued, rough ply, tissue and handed them to her. “Are they happy tears or sad?”
Truthfully, she couldn’t answer either one of those questions. She didn’t know what she was doing. Whether she was happy or sad remained to be determined at a later date.
“April?” Bob smoothed a hand over her hair, trying to calm her. “Relax. You’re hyperventilating. This isn’t good. Come on, relax, and slow your breathing down.” He tried to get her to breathe rhythmically. “Remember the techniques we went over when you studied metaphysics? Slow and easy,” he said calmly.
She looked up at him with incredibility. She was pregnant with James’s baby. And he wanted her to relax? “Screw metaphysics…and breathing. I’m going to puke!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The mill site was blanketed in white. Pristine snow covered the fields. A rented sedan parked off the side of the road just a few feet ahead told her someone else was here.
She wanted to be alone. This was the only place left where she might have a connection with her ghosts. She needed them to feel at peace. She laughed silently. Odd thing to think—needing ghosts to make her happy. But she didn’t feel it. Not like she had. It was just an empty piece of land now. Her thigh-high boots trudged through the crust packed snow. The sound of the isolated crunch of her feet a soothing balm as the open land stood before her. She followed a set of deep foot prints, wondering who could be out here. The footprints trailed down over the slope of the ridge. When she topped the rise, the figure of a tall, broad shouldered male stood in silhouette against the ridge-line. Her heart flip-flopped in her chest. Her pace quickened, fearing the apparition would disappear before her eyes. It didn’t. Dare she hope?
“James?” she called out. Was it really him? The figure, still a good ways away, turned towards her. “James!” She squealed with delight, tears clogging her throat. It was him! She ran but came up short when he didn’t return her fervor. He gave her a strange, eager smile.
“Dr. Branford? I didn’t realize you would be out here.” The man held out his hand in greeting. “I thought you might still be recovering.”
This wasn’t James, but his look-alike. Her heart sank as she tried desperately to recover her disappointment. She wouldn’t faint now. It would give Kenneth a complex for sure. “Mr. Miles. I didn’t expect you to still be in town.”
“Well, I didn’t have a chance to talk with you after you took ill. I do hope you’re feeling better. Dr. Moreland said you’d been exhausted, working long hours to handle my case. I didn’t expect you to wear yourself out physically.”
He didn’t know about her condition. She wasn’t showing yet so no need to let on about her pregnancy. Besides, it was too complicated to explain. Yeah, I’m also pregnant with your ancestor’s baby.
“I had some other family issues I had to deal with. I guess between it all, I didn’t take care of myself.”
“Ah yes, I heard about your aunt’s house, I’m sorry. It must have been very taxing on you.” He put his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “Since we will be working together, I will make sure it doesn’t happen again. I can’t have my historical research partner passing out on me during interviews while we are working to restore my…err…ancestor’s home. You’ll be assigned a personal secretary and assistant to run your errands while in my employ.”
“You’re restoring the old mill site?” April was taken aback, and then his offer stunned her. “You’re hiring me to work for you?”
“Not for me, with me,” he corrected. “I’m overseeing the construction process personally. It means a lot to me, and I was hoping we could work together.”
“You’ll have a full benefits package, a higher salary than what you could receive from the university you’d applied to. I had my people check into it.”
He was a cocky, self-assured, presumptuous ass. She didn’t care how much he looked like James. He wasn’t James. As much as she’d enjoyed the later emails she’d received from him during her research, the man was a bit intimidating and high handed. He’s a billionaire! Of course he would have the traits of a monarch. Did he assume she would jump at his offer? No matter how good it was?
“What makes you think I’ll work for you, Mr. Miles?”
He smiled and his silver-gray eyes twinkled mischievously. Damn your eyes, Kenneth Miles! They reminded her so much of James’s when he was up to no good.
“I was hoping we’d moved beyond formalities, Dr. Branford. I wish you would call me Kenneth. This is 2012 after all.”
April looked up at him with a bit of shock. “What did you say?” It sounded so familiar. Like when she had told James the same thing during their romantic dinner.
“I said I wish you would call me Kenneth, or Ken. I thought with everything we’ve been through these past few months we might have moved on to something less formal.”
“Everything we’ve been through?” She didn’t want to encourage him to think a few emails exchanged in the name of business meant they had anything more than a professional connection. Calling each other by their given names would be disastrous to her well-being. Having him say her name in the same sexy English brogue as James had used would destroy her.
“I feel a connection to you through James. I don’t know if I can explain it.” He looked around the wastelands. “What do you see for the mill site? What’s your vision?” he asked.
Was he testing her?
This was a safer topic. She could handle talking ‘business’ much easier than formalities.
“I want to see James’s dream brought back to life. He loved the lands, the people who worked for him, the mill, and what it meant to the locals,” she spoke softly, her throat constricted with painful emotion.
Kenneth nodded. “I feel James Addison would approve of your vision.”
They spent most of the afternoon walking the land, scoping out the foundation of the house, the mill, even the location of Daniel’s future home James was going to help him build, just down by the creek where an old willow tree grew.
Kenneth surprised her with an uncanny ability to know where things were. He didn’t seem at all what she had expected. Not only did his physical presence shock her, but she’d assumed he would be gruff and demanding. Other than his earlier presumptuous offer, he seemed almost likable. For one of the world’s top financial kings, he was surprisingly soft-spoken and quite intuitive.
As they started back to their cars, April couldn’t help but laugh.
“What’s so humorous, Dr. Branford?”
“You’ve been reading too many of the letters James sent to his sister.”
“Elsbeth’s letters?” His brow quirked the same cocky way James’s used to. “Why do you say that?”
“They must have detailed all the imagery to Kings Mill. You have an uncanny knack for knowing details about a place gone for so long.” April’s chin tilted in a challenge.
“Perhaps.” He smiled at her. “Or perhaps I have a bit of James Addison in me.”
***
James didn’t want to disturb April. He’d already pissed her off earlier this afternoon at the mill site when he’d claimed to have a bit of James Addison in him. He hadn’t meant to cause her distress. He’d only wanted her to question him on his knowledge about Kings Mill. He wanted to push her buttons to find out who he really was. She either couldn’t see it, or didn’t want to believe it. He could understand. It would be difficult to explain. But he assumed, she of all people, could grasp reincarnation.
She looked so peaceful, carefully arranging a small poinsettia plant near the block of marble. James approached her quietly, not wanting to disturb her and yet the urgency to be with her, to comfort her, tell her everything would be all right, ate at him.<
br />
She kissed her fingertips and placed them on the stone briefly before she stood. He reached out, gave into his impulse, and tugged on her braid. Startled, April gasped and turned to smack him. James reached out automatically, grabbing her arms to steady her.
“James!”
Yes, his mind screamed.
He smiled, trying to get her to smile in return. “I guess I do look like him a bit. His portrait is over my mantle in Sunderbury.”
She’d called him James! She’d also called him by James’s name as she’d run towards him at the mill site earlier this morning. She looked down at his hands, still gripping her upper arms. He slowly released her, backing up a few steps, to give her space.
“What are you doing here? Are you following me?” she asked, walking away hastily.
He thought momentarily and frowned. “Matter of fact, I am.” He stopped abruptly. “Does that make me a stalker?” He shrugged and picked up his step again. April was walking backward, keeping him in her wary sights, her hands jammed in the pockets of her navy pea coat. This all seemed so familiar; so long ago, and yet only a short time, too.
“Yes. You are a stalker.” She pointed out. “If you want me to work for you—”
Mildly hurt and confused he jogged up to her and stopped as she stopped. “Not for me, with me, remember?”
“Tomato…tomaut-o.”
“How about dinner? Is it too much to ask? Most women jump at the chance for dinner with me.”
“I’m not ‘most women,’” April replied.
“No, you’re not. You’re like no other woman I’ve met, April Branford. I can’t stop thinking about you.”
She shied away from him like a fox being chased by hounds.
“Dinner? I promise I won’t ask for more than what you are willing to give. Let me prove to you we would be good together, professionally,” he added for her benefit. He smiled his most charming smile, trying to get her to loosen up, until he saw her eyes cloud with grief.