“You don’t know how you feel about me, that’s my whole point. You’re so emotionally exhausted, you don’t know what day of the week it is.”
“I’m willing to find out.”
“I’m not,” he said, feeling about as low as dirt, but knowing he had to spell things out exactly as they were. “You put your life on hold to recover Angela, and so did I. It’s time now to pick up where we left off. You’ve got family issues to resolve, ambitions to fulfill. I’ve got deadlines looming. I’m not willing to compromise any of them for something as elusive as…whatever it was we had this past week, and you shouldn’t be, either.
“I thought we had something special.”
He heard heartbreak in her words; felt an answering tug of pain deep inside himself. “We did. I’ll never forget it, or you. But it would be a mistake to blow it up into something more than it really was.”
Another voice intruded, advising passengers traveling on Flight 549 to Vancouver that boarding had commenced. “That means you, cookie,” he said, nudging her gently toward the gate.
At the last minute, she turned and lifted her face to his. “I hate goodbyes.”
“Me, too,” he said, and dropped a kiss at the corner of her mouth. “But we always knew we were a team just for a short while.”
For a moment, she clung to him, and he heard her tattered breathing and knew how close she was to breaking down. He couldn’t have dealt with that so, coward that he was, he pushed her again toward the gate and without waiting to see that she passed through safely, wheeled around and left.
CHAPTER TWELVE
LIFE went on, Linda discovered, but it was never quite the same again. For some, like her parents, things were better. After years of being apart, they’d regained what they’d lost for so long and found each other again.
For June, too, the future looked bright. Motherhood brought a bloom to her face, to her spirit, which nothing could erase. Angela was well named; truly an angel and an endless source of delight to her doting family. It didn’t hurt any that the boy next door came home from overseas a man, and picked up where his high school relationship with June had left off when his company shipped him off to Malaysia for six years.
For Linda, the adjustment wasn’t so easy. Although happy for her mother and sister—and yes, for her father, too—being exposed to so much conjugal bliss was painful. So, she moved into her own apartment, across town from the rest of her family, and worked with one of the best chefs in North America, in one of the city’s foremost hotels.
She went out with Melissa, to the movies, to restaurants. She kept a chart of ideas she might one day use when she opened her own place. The trouble was, the prospect didn’t excite her very much anymore.
For a while—for too long—she hoped the phone would ring and it would be Mac, telling her he couldn’t live without her. But he didn’t call. He didn’t visit. He sent one of his brothers to deliver her car and drive the Jaguar back to Oregon. As November gales swept away the last remnants of autumn, he sent a letter reiterating everything he’d said at the airport.
Kirk Thayer’s death was ruled accidental, he wrote. Sadie had a bit of a breakdown when she heard he’d died, so James took her off on a six-month cruise to the Far East. It’ll do them both a world of good.
Trillium Cove’s hunkered down for the winter. I’m working on a new book. Hope you, too, are moving forward with your career and that you’re happy again.
She tore the paper into shreds and flushed it down the toilet. Then she lowered the lid and sat there crying her eyes out for a good half hour. Her mistake, she realized, had been allowing herself to fall in love with the man, when he’d never been anything other than the detective, there to meet a challenge and emerge victorious.
He’d moved on with his life. It was time she did the same with hers.
In December, she met a man who lived in her new building and started dating him. His name was John and he worked for the government. A nice, stable, steady guy whose idea of excitement was playing Scrabble—until the night he had one too many rum eggnogs and tried to put the moves on her.
She smacked him in the mouth and didn’t go out with him again.
Christmas came and went. And still she dreamed about a man with too-long black hair, and blue-gray eyes, and a smile that turned her molten with longing. She heard his voice in her sleep, felt his touch on her body. And woke up with tears rolling down her face.
She ached, and didn’t know what to do to stop the pain.
Things weren’t the same. He’d gone from being contentedly alone, to being miserably lonely. The house was too big, the bed too empty. He spent too many hours standing at the big window in the living room, staring down at the wind-swept beach as if he expected to find her perched on a rock, staring through the curtains of rain to the mist-shrouded horizon. On the few occasions that a knock came at his door, his heart lifted, only to thud back in place when the caller turned out not to be Linda.
Andrea told him he was a fool. His brothers thought it was hilarious that a woman had finally brought him to heel. His sisters-in-law baked him pies and cookies and casseroles. His mother was wise enough to do none of those things.
He flew to Mexico for Christmas, to Ciudad del Carmen, to do some scuba diving and soak up a little sun. He met a pretty, fun-loving woman, and took her to bed, hoping she’d make him forget. She didn’t. He couldn’t get it up.
In February, the couple who owned the Trillium Cove Inn retired, and put the place on the market. Just as well. It had been going downhill for some time and needed an injection of fresh blood. Someone young and energetic, with sophisticated tastes and a cosmopolitan approach. Someone like Linda.
The Inn needed her.
He needed her.
She’d just finished shampooing her hair, one Saturday morning in early March, when the phone rang. Probably Melissa wanting to meet for lunch and do some shopping, she thought, lifting the receiver.
“Hey, cookie!”
Her heart leaped. Stopped. Soared and dipped like a gull riding the wind which scoured the beach below his house. “Who is this?” she said, afraid to say his name; afraid this was just another dream. It couldn’t be him. He’d said they should get on with their separate lives. He’d never call, not after all this time.
“Who do you think it is?” he said, all tough Detective Lieutenant spitting the words out like bullets. “Who else do you know who calls you ‘cookie’?”
She held the phone away. Stared at it. Brought it back to her ear. “What do you want?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “This business of living by myself has its drawbacks and you once told me I should hire a live-in housekeeper to take care of the cooking and laundry and all that sort of stuff. Trouble is, I can’t find anyone who’ll agree to my terms.”
“Perhaps you haven’t looked hard enough.”
“I’ve scoured the state,” he assured her. “It’s not the cooking or the laundry that’s the problem, it’s the live-in part, given that I have only one bedroom and one bed. So I’m wondering if you’d be interested in the job, since you’ve already tried out the bed and me, and found both to be—”
“No, Mac,” she said, a very small part of her laughing because she knew what he was really asking, but a much larger part bleeding because, for all his courage under fire, he didn’t have the guts to come out and say what he really meant—and what she needed to hear. “I’m afraid not.”
“Tell me you’re kidding!”
“I’m afraid not. Your terms just aren’t good enough.”
“Well, I’ll be damned! Are you open to negotiation?”
“Possibly. But it’ll take more than a phone call to convince me to give it serious consideration.”
“I see,” he said.
The phone clicked in her ear and the line went dead. Stunned, she replaced it in its cradle, unable to believe he’d actually hung up on her; that he’d opened up all her half-healed wounds and left
her bleeding. Again!
Someone rapped on her door. Still flabbergasted, she went to answer. He’d hung up on her! After all this time—all this…this silence, he called out of the blue and just expected she’d fall in with whatever he suggested!
He stood outside in the hall, phone in one hand, flowers in the other. “Damn, but you’re a difficult cuss,” he said, jamming his foot in the door as if he thought she might slam it closed in his face—which she would have, if she hadn’t been too paralyzed with joy to move! “I knew from the start I’d have my hands full dealing with you.”
“You can’t be here,” she said faintly, afraid she was going to pass out. Afraid he was just a figment of her overwrought imagination. “You’re in Oregon.”
His eyes glimmered with laughter. “I’m a genius, I know, but even I can’t be in two places at once, cookie.”
She leaned forward. Dared to touch him. He felt real enough. “You are here!”
“Well, sure,” he said, looping an arm around her waist. “You did say a phone call wasn’t enough, didn’t you?”
She opened her mouth. Left it open. Because, for all that she wanted to say something significant, there were no words to describe how she felt. Like a perfectly risen soufflé just out of the oven. So light of spirit, so full of sudden elation that she wasn’t sure she could stand herself. “You’re here!” she said again, just to be sure, then, as an afterthought, “How did you find out where I live?”
“I phoned your mother. And I had to come.”
“Why?”
“To tell you that a world without you in it isn’t a place I want to be.”
“That’s not what you said in Los Angeles.”
He backed her into the apartment and kissed her, hard and long. “What’ll it take to make you forget what I said in Los Angeles?” he murmured against her mouth.
“A very great deal,” she informed him, willing herself not to cave in if, at the end of it all, he just walked away and left her to start the healing process all over again. “You said we had nothing in common, that our priorities didn’t coincide.”
“Is it okay for me to be wrong, once in a while?”
She regarded him warily. “I don’t know. It depends.”
“Would it reassure you if I told you I came here with more than just empty promises?” He dropped the flowers on the table and pulled her down beside him on the sofa. “I have a proposition for you, cookie.”
“I’m listening,” she said, absorbing the sight and scent of him. He wore tan slacks and a tan leather jacket, with a black turtleneck sweater underneath. He’d had his hair cut recently. He’d splashed aftershave on his freshly shaven jaw. She could have eaten him up.
“Tell me first, have you done anything about starting your own restaurant?”
“No,” she said, steeling herself to resist the idea of abandoning all her ambitions and dreams just to be with him.
“Why not? Don’t you want your own business after all?”
“Yes. I’ve worked too hard to give up on it. It’s the only thing I know I can count on.”
“You can count on me, Linda,” he said. “And I won’t ask you to give up a thing by doing so. I’ll give you the world if you’ll let me.”
“I don’t need the world, Mac,” she said, drowning in the stormy blue-gray of his eyes. “I never did.”
“How about a piece of my world, then? A house on the beach, with the Trillium Cove Inn thrown in on the side? I bought it, cookie, but I’m damned if I know what I’m going to do with it, if you won’t agree to accept it as a wedding gift.”
“I’m not getting married,” she said on a fragile breath, even as her heart soared again.
“Would you, if I were to propose?”
“It would depend.”
He drew her closer. Let his lips graze lightly, teasingly, over hers. “On what, darlin’?”
“On why you asked,” she said, struggling to inhale a puff of air into her beleaguered lungs.
“Would telling you I love you be enough?”
“Do you?” she asked him.
“Oh, honey, you have no idea! And nor had I for the longest time. Yes, I love you.” He leaned closer, lifted a strand of her wet hair and put his mouth to her ear. “The plain truth is, no one makes me fulminate like you.”
She dared to laugh then, and it felt wonderful. All the grief and misery simply melted away in the sunshine of his answering smile as if they’d never been anything but a brief and passing storm. “Did you really buy the Inn?”
“Uh-uh. Like me, it’s in pretty sad shape and desperate for some TLC.” He kissed her earlobe, teased the outer shell of her ear with his tongue. “Probably requires a new kitchen, definitely needs a new chef.”
“I think we can probably work out some sort of deal,” she said, fighting a losing battle with the desire taking hold within her. How many times had she relived that night in San Francisco? How often had she imagined his touch again? Dreamed of surfing the waves of passion with him, and knowing that he needed her as badly as she needed him?
Too often! It was time to experience them in the flesh. “In fact,” she said, “the more I think about it, running an inn by day, and fulminating with you by night seems like a very fine idea.”
“I’m not an easy man, Linda,” he reminded her soberly. “It won’t always be smooth sailing. I get moody when the writing’s not going well. Impossible to deal with when old colleagues call on me for advice, then ignore it. I have a past and people from it who still matter to me.”
“Are you trying to talk me out of it already?”
“Not a chance.” He inched her back against the sofa cushions, and traced the shape of her mouth with his finger. “No matter what else happens, I promise you’ll always come first. You’ll never face another day, or another difficulty, without me there beside you.”
“I know that,” she whispered, pulling him down until his weight rested against her and she could feel the erratic tattoo of his heart against hers. “And it’s all I need to know. I love you, Mac Sullivan, because of who you are—because of your loyalty and your strength and your compassion. Please remind me of that if I ever forget it again.”
“You can count on it, cookie,” he said, his gaze scouring her face, feature by feature. “And at the risk of repeating myself, I’ll say it again: you can also count on me. Always and forever.”
It was more than she’d dared to hope for. And all she’d ever want.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-8316-3
MACKENZIE’S PROMISE
First North American Publication 2002.
Copyright © 2002 by Kathy Garner.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
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