Before long he would have dredged up every error— every misstep, every wrong turn—she had made over the past six years, all of which would be openly discussed and demonstrated for the rest of the dancers.
Her face burned at the thought of the ordeal, of the humiliation Ivan would heap upon her right before dismissing her. There was, however, no way around it, other than to just never show up again. As much as she dreaded the very thought of the certain confrontation, she could never be that much of a coward. She would tell Ivan face-to-face of her plans to take a leave of absence from the troupe. And she would take the consequences—however harsh they might prove to be, she vowed as she dialed her mother's number—praying that it would, in the end, prove to be worth it.
Disappointed when the answering machine picked up instead of Delia, Georgia left a brief message, then gathered up her discarded shoes and socks, depositing them on the bedroom floor before heading into the shower, where she would rehearse her lines before taking on Ivan the Terrible.
Matthew Bishop stood at the passenger side of his battered black pickup truck and waited until Artie, his dog, had climbed in before slamming the door with a vengeance. His sister, Laura, was making him crazy with worry. Ever since she had found her birth mother, she'd become more and more involved with her newly discovered family. He just couldn't understand it, why Laura would feel this need to immediately open her heart to this stranger, who had, after all, given her away as a newborn and hadn't bothered to look for her until thirty-five years had passed.
"Take it easy," he'd tried to tell her. "Go one step at a time with these people. You don't know them, you don't know what their motives are—"
'What motive could there be, Matt?" Laura had snapped. "Delia just wants to get to know me. I have two half sisters and a half brother, I've gone a lifetime without even knowing of their existence—they want to know me, too. And I want to know them. What is it that you're afraid of, Matt?"
"The truth?" He'd asked, not wanting to have to say it.
"Of course, the truth." Laura had insisted.
"I'm afraid that she'll abandon you again." It had hurt him just to utter the words, but she had asked for the truth and he would give it to her. "That one day the novelty will wear off for her, and that she'll just slip back into the life she had before she found you."
"That will never, ever happen, Matt." A shadow had passed over Laura's beautiful face, in spite of her words. Perhaps she had secretly feared the same thing?
"You don't know that, Laur."
"Well, I guess only time will prove that I am right, and you are wrong," Laura had said. "Delia gave me life, Matt. I need to know her. I know that you don't understand, but you have to trust me."
No, Matt didn't understand. He had memories enough of his birth mother—hazy though they might be—to know that he never wanted to so much as hear her name spoken aloud. In his mind and in his heart, Charity Evans Bishop, who had taken him in as a terrible-tempered toddler and had loved him fiercely, was his real mother. It had been Charity who had loved him before he had been lovable, had rocked him when he screamed with rage and frustration, and had held him while he sobbed out his fears.
Having been mostly neglected and ignored since birth, Matt had come to the Bishops' home as a four-year-old who, having rarely been spoken to, could not speak beyond a very limited vocabulary. The social workers who had found him living in squalor when his drug-addicted mother had overdosed that last time had immediately declared the boy to be retarded, but the police officer who had been called to the scene had sensed something else—something fierce and alive. The officer had called his cousin from the hospital to ask if Tom Bishop and his wife still wanted that son they had talked about adopting. From the minute she had laid eyes on Matthew, Charity had declared that there was nothing wrong with the boy that a loving family could not cure.
For the most part, she had been right.
And so Matt had gone from the hell of abandoned houses to the luxury of a historic inn; from near-complete solitude to a loving family that had included the daughter the Bishops had adopted twelve years earlier. Laura had adored Matt from the day he had been brought home. She had played with him and read to him, taught him the things that a child living with the bay on one side and the ocean on the other needed to know. She had become his big sister in every true way, and together they had been the children that Tom and Charity had prayed for.
And hadn't Tom Bishop been the sort of dad that every boy deserved? One who taught him to fish and played ball with him; went to all of his ball games and cheered him on, from Little League through high school? It had been Matt's darkest day when they lost Tom, who, with his last breath, had reminded his son that he was the man of the family, now.
"Take care of your mother and your sister, Matt…" Tom had whispered.
"I will, Dad. I promise," a teary Matt had vowed.
Oh, and just look at how well you kept that promise, Matt's conscience poked at him. You couldn't protect your mother from getting sick, but you could have done a better job watching out for Laura. If you had been on the ball, maybe she'd never have married…
Exasperated with himself, Matt marched to his truck, haunted by promises not kept.
Well, this time he wouldn't let his father down.
Tom and Charity had given Matt a home and a family, a name and a sense of self-worth, and—most important—they had given him unconditional love. He owed it to them—and to Laura—to make sure that she wasn't hurt.
He wished that Laura had just told that Enright woman to take a hike when she first showed up. But she hadn't, and she had opened her heart immediately and welcomed all the Enright clan like—well, like long-lost family. Laura had always been one to lay all her cards on the table. Her open, loving nature had caused her to be badly burned once before.
If she wasn't wise enough to be a little more cautious, a little less trusting on her own account, then Matt would have to be vigilant for her.
"Damn stubborn woman," Matt mumbled as he shot into the driver's side of the cab and caught a glimpse of his sister in his side-view mirror as she approached the truck.
"Matt, I just wish you would be a little more rational about this. I can't understand why you are so closed-minded…"
"Closed-minded?" He rolled the window down and stared into Laura's face. "Because I'm trying to protect you, that makes me closed-minded?"
"Matt, I don't need anyone to protect me. Delia is my mother."
"Laura, your mother is wasting away over in Riverview."
"Matt, that was unkind. Are you implying that because I'm establishing a relationship with Delia, I'm somehow neglecting Mom?"
"Does the shoe fit?"
"No, it doesn't fit. I still drive out to see Mom three times a week, just as I have since the day we took her there, Matt, and for two cents right now, I'd drag you out of that truck and drop-kick your ass from here to the Atlantic. I really resent—"
"Yeah, well, I really resent, too…" he muttered as he shifted the truck into gear and prepared to pull out of the driveway.
"Matt," she called after him. "If you would only spend just a little time with Delia—talk to her, get to know her—you'd see that she doesn't have any ulterior motives, that she's—"
"I don't have the time or the inclination to get to know Delia, or anyone else named Enright." He hung one arm out the window and waved. "You do what you want, Laura. You will anyway. Just remember that you have a family that loves you, one that has always loved you. We were here before she came back into the picture, and we'll be here for you after she leaves."
"Matt, she isn't leaving!" he heard her insist as he pulled away.
In his rearview mirror, Matt could see Laura standing where he'd left her, her hands folded across her chest. That one foot tapping on the asphalt surface of the parking area behind the inn left no doubt in his mind that his sister was really angry. Well, he was none too happy with her at that moment, either.
Lau
ra turned heel and stomped up the back steps leading to the inn.
Forced by oncoming vehicles to stop abruptly about ten feet from the exit of the narrow lot, Matt backed up, then waited as both a light blue Jeep and an oil delivery truck prepared to pull in. The Jeep drove past him briskly and swept into a spot to his left, but the driver of the oil truck had cut too wide an arc, and Matt had to back up yet again to permit the truck to enter the parking lot. Mumbling oaths under his breath, he sat and watched the truck slowly maneuver through the entry.
He heard the slam of a car door, and turned his head to the left in time to see a young woman round the back of the Jeep and open the cargo door. She was a tiny thing, and looked as delicate as spun glass.
A trim little bottom wrapped in denim leaned into the back of the Jeep to retrieve several bags and a box from the cargo area. While shifting items from one arm to the other, a canvas bag dropped to her feet. As she bent to retrieve it, unbelievably long hair—pale as corn silk and reaching near to her waist—slid over her shoulders in a thick wave. She turned, and in one motion, awkwardly slammed the cargo door with her foot. From ten feet away, Matt could see big, wide-set eyes, a pert little nose, and full lips that bore no trace of lipstick. It was a face a man wasn't likely to forget.
"Nice." He nodded objectively. "Very, very nice."
The blonde hoisted the canvas bags over her shoulder, holding a box upon which balanced another bag, and walked toward the inn.
She moves like music slipped unbidden through his mind, and he wondered where the thought had come from.
"Looks like we left one day too soon, Artie." Matt said aloud.
The dog panted noncommittally.
"Probably a tourist, making her way up the coast. Ummm, maybe Florida to New York, what do you think?" Matt said, playing with his dog the game he had, as a child, played with his sister; trying to guess who the inn's patrons might be, where they were from, and where they might be going.
Artie thumped his tail loudly on the black leather.
"Yeah, that's what I thought, too."
The blonde dropped the bag she'd been balancing, and struggled to do a deep knee bend to pick it up.
"Aw, there are some opportunities that a man just can't pass up," Matt said. He opened the cab door and hopped out. "You wait here, Artie. This is strictly a one-man job."
"You look like you could use a little help," Matt called to her.
Matt's long legs had carried him halfway across the parking lot before the blonde was able to grab the errant bag. He picked it up with one hand, and with the other, reached for the box that was wobbling perilously on her knees.
"I'm afraid I'm one hand short," she said, her smile pure sunshine, her voice carrying the traces of an unheard symphony.
She was even prettier up close, he discovered, with eyes a sultry green, skin clear and fresh as a newborn's. She even smelled wonderful.
"You're in luck. I have two to spare." He reached down and offered her one. She held one small hand up to him, and he took it, helping her to pull herself up to a standing position.
She was even smaller than she had looked from across the parking lot—shorter in height; her bone structure fine and almost fragile.
"Thank you. I'm usually not this clumsy. I should have made two trips and saved myself from this futile balancing act," she said wryly.
"But then I wouldn't have met you, would I?" He grinned.
They reached the back of the inn, and he was just about to add that he hadn't actually met her, since he didn't know her name, when Jody, the inn's young cook, pulled into the parking lot and came to a screeching halt in her vintage Buick.
In customary shorts and T-shirt, Jody always appeared younger than her late twenties. She had a pretty face, a saucy manner, and a one-track mind: the culinary needs of the Bishop's Inn.
"Oh, Matt, I'm glad you're here," she called from the open window even before she turned off the ignition. "I need a hand carrying this meat order into the kitchen. Mr. Haley couldn't make the delivery today because his son broke his foot over the weekend and he's shorthanded…"
Alighting from the car, she glanced over her shoulder to where Matt stood close by the pretty little blond woman.
"If Laura sees you hitting on the guests, she'll have your head," Jody teased. "Now, if you wouldn't mind…"
The little blonde laughed and set her large canvas bags onto the ground, then reached for the belongings that he had carried for her.
"I can manage," she told him. "I'll come back for the bags."
"Oh, but—" Matt protested.
"I'm fine, really. I think your hands are needed more elsewhere." She looked up into his face, and he thought he'd never seen a sweeter smile in all his life.
If only he'd canceled his office hours for this afternoon, he could stay awhile, and bask in the glow that seemed to surround her. Right at that moment, nothing else seemed nearly as important.
Grumbling, he turned his attention to assisting Jody in removing several heavy boxes from the back of the car. When he turned back around, seeking one last glimpse of long blond hair and faded blue denim, the woman was out of view.
He shrugged reluctantly. Not that it mattered; their paths weren't likely to cross again.
Matt hoisted the box over his shoulder and headed for the back door that led into the kitchen. By the time he came back out, even her canvas bags had disappeared.
two
Georgia had always been somewhat of an early riser, but this, she thought as she trudged behind Laura across a hard packed stretch of beach, this is the middle of the night. The stars were still out, a cloud-shrouded moon hung low over a barely visible ocean, and it was cold as hell.
"Let's get up early tomorrow and watch the sun come up over the ocean," Laura had suggested the night before.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, in this predawn hour, Laura's words rang through Georgia's mind in singsong fashion.
Georgia grumbled aloud. "Whatever was I thinking?"
"Did you say something?" Laura called back over her shoulder.
"Nothing important." Georgia sighed, stopping where Laura had stopped, down closer to the water, where the sand was a little softer and the sound and smell of the sea were more acute.
The wind whipping fiercely off the ocean threatened to knock Georgia from her feet, and she swayed slightly in resistance.
"You'll thank me later," Laura assured Georgia as she unrolled the down sleeping bag she had brought for warmth. Without waiting for a comment, she tossed one end of the sleeping bag to Georgia and said, "Here, wrap up in your end and I'll wrap up from the other, then we'll sit down at the same time."
"Okay," Georgia said without enthusiasm.
Laughing at the younger woman's attempt to be a good sport, Laura wrapped the thick layer of down around her body and motioned to her sister to sit.
"Tell me again what the point of this little igloo-type thing might be?"
"To keep us from freezing while we wait for the sun to appear." Laura cozied back into her half of the shelter they had created. "It may not be particularly pretty, but it will keep your butt from turning blue."
"You're too late. My butt is already blue," Georgia muttered. 'It's been blue since we left the inn. Laura, it's cold out here!"
"Ummm, it is, isn't it?" Laura tilted her head to the heavens and drew in a piercing breath of frigid air. "It's lovely."
"You're crazy."
"Quit whining and snuggle yourself back into the down. It'll keep you warm, I promise."
Georgia did as she was told and waited for the warming process to begin.
Laura coaxed her hands out of heavy fleece gloves and poured a cup of steaming coffee from a thermos into one of the plastic cups she had tucked into her backpack. "Here, this always helps, too." She passed the cup to Georgia, who took it gratefully and wrapped her fingers around it.
"You sound as if you do this often."
"As often as I need t
o."
"Why would anyone need to get up in the middle of the night, trek across the frozen tundra, and sit on a cold, deserted stretch of beach in frigid weather in the dark?"
"Ask me that again later."
Georgia shivered and sank back a little farther into the plump nylon cocoon that surrounded her. She did feel a little warmer.
Together they stared out across the unseen ocean, eyes searching for that first thin slice of light that would signal the impending dawn, that faint whisper of gold in an endless blackened sky that would soon be alive with color.
There. There, smack in the middle of the horizon. Gold and yellow, then yes, just a hint of orange followed. Inch by regal inch the day unfolded and spread its gentle majesty around the two women sitting on the sand. Lifted by an unseen hand, the ball of fire rose dramatically, bright and alive, and the glow fanned out from its center to push toward the edges of a near-purple sky. Streaks of light flashed across the surface of the water, a golden carpet being unrolled across the distance to the shore as the very sky seemed to raise itself up from the ends of the sea.
The two women sat wordlessly sharing the morning, watching the show unfold.
The ocean began to shimmer with the reflected light, and Georgia leaned against her older sister and sighed gratefully. "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"I'd forgotten just how spectacular a sunrise could be."
"Most of us do need reminding from time to time." Laura nodded.
A line of birds in crisp V formation crossed the skyline.
"Geese?" Georgia whispered.
"Double-crested cormorants," Laura replied.
Georgia frowned. "How can you tell the difference?"
Laura laughed and sipped at her coffee. "By their crooked necks. Geese hold their necks straight out when they fly, as do most of the cormorants. The double-crested, however, fly with their necks sort of bent."
"You bird-people are all alike. You're almost as bad as Zoey. She thinks she's an expert on birds because she went on a bird count at Devlin's Light with Nick and India," Georgia grumbled, referring to their brother and sister-in-law, who lived on the Delaware Bay. "Zoey has gone twice now, and thinks she's an authority on seabirds."
Moon Dance Page 3