by Lyn Horner
“Do you like the cookies?” a smoky voice asked from behind him.
Pivoting, he swallowed the last delicious bite and shook his head. “Like is too mild a word. I love them! They’re the best sugar cookies I’ve ever tasted, and I’ve had my share. Buttery, not overly sweet, and the flavor, scrumptious! Clever girl, choosing almond over vanilla.”
She favored him with a dazzling smile, cherry lips parting to reveal lustrous white teeth. “I didn’t choose it, my mother did. It’s her recipe. She’s used almond extract in sugar cookies for as long as I can remember.”
“Indeed? And what does your brilliant mother call these little wonders?” he inquired before biting his third cookie in half.
“Nothing special, just almond cookies.”
“Tsk, tsk, that will never do. They need a name as delightful as their taste. Hmm, how about Almond Delights?” He shook his head, thinking. “Better yet, Almond Dream Delights. Yes, that’s it.”
A husky laugh wafted from her delectable mouth. “You really do love them, don’t you.”
“Of course. I’d never betray my profession by praising a food I didn’t enjoy.”
“Your profession?” She gazed at him, blinking in confusion.
“Why yes.” He smiled modestly. “I’m a pastry chef, you see, and the author of one or two little cookbooks.”
“A pastry chef! And … and you really, truly love my, I mean Mama’s cookies?”
“I really, truly do,” he assured her with a chuckle. Her look of wonderment brought to mind angels singing, except he’d never seen a painting of an angel with such sinfully seductive lips and fiery hair. “In fact, my lovely Charlotte, I would very much like to get hold of your mama’s recipe. I’m quite willing to pay for it, of course,” he added, brushing his hand down her clothed arm to the satiny smooth skin below the edge of her sleeve.
She jerked her arm away and stumbled backward. “Don’t touch me!” she gasped, color draining from her face.
“What the devil?” Tristan blurted, scowling in astonishment. “I merely brushed your arm. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Y-you already did!” she choked out. Whirling around, she pushed through the crowd of half tipsy party guests, making for the balcony door. She opened it and stepped out into the December cold before Tristan caught up with her. Following her outside, he reluctantly closed the door on the warm interior.
“Are you crazy, dashing out here without a coat?” he barked at her back. Getting no reply but seeing her hug herself and shiver, he shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her shoulders. “What happened in there? Did I offend you by offering to purchase your mother’s recipe? That wasn’t my intention.”
She shook her head. “No, no, it wasn’t that. I … I felt something from you, something that hurt so much, I couldn’t stand it.”
“Felt something? What are you talking about?” He suddenly wondered if she was entirely sound of mind.
She remained silent, huddled in his jacket – which he was missing more and more in the frigid air. Finally, she turned and studied him uncertainly. “I-I need your word that you won’t repeat what I’m about to tell you.”
He frowned, bemused by her strange request, but nodded. “I swear I won’t say a word to anyone.”
She shielded her eyes behind dark auburn lashes. “I don’t often confess this but I-I feel I can trust you.” Taking a deep breath, she looked up. “I’m an empath. Do you know what that means?”
“No.” Curious now, he crossed his arms. “But you’re about to tell me, right?”
“Right.” She smiled mirthlessly. “You must be freezing. I’ll explain inside.” Stepping around him, she slid open the glass door and he gladly trailed after her. Once inside, she handed him back his tux jacket.
“Come with me.” Not waiting for a reply, she wove through the crowd and led him along a hallway in the opposite direction from the kitchen, past one door then another. Halting at a third, she pushed it open to reveal a large bedroom decorated in shades of pink. Except for the queen-size bed, it looked like a little girl’s room, and Tristan realized that’s exactly what it was, although the girl in question was a teenager.
“This is Marilee’s room,” Charlotte confirmed. “The two of us sleep here when her mother allows me to bring her for a visit. No one will bother us here.” Crossing to a pink-cushioned rocker, she seated herself and pointed him toward an overstuffed chair upholstered in pink and white checked fabric.
Tristan tossed his jacket over the chair back and sat down, wondering what this was leading up to, and if he really wanted to know.
“As I said, I’m an empath. I pick up feelings from other people, especially when they touch me. That’s what happened tonight, first outside the kitchen when you took hold of my arm and again a few minutes ago.” She paused, laced her fingers together and studied the pink-carpeted floor.
He eyed her in disbelief. “I see, and what you felt from me caused you pain?” he asked skeptically.
She raised her startling blue eyes and nodded, biting her lip. “You lost someone very close to you, a year or two ago, I think. It hurt you terribly and it still does. I shared your pain when you touched me.”
Tristan went rigid with shock, clutching the arms of his chair. A moment passed before he could speak and when he did, his voice came out thick with remembered anguish. “My fiancée, Jennifer, died two years ago next week.”
Charlotte gave a wordless cry and clapped a hand over her mouth.
“She’d done some Christmas shopping and was crossing a street, loaded down with packages,” he went on, staring into space. “The police believe she never saw the drunk driver who ran a red light and hit her. He dragged her nearly a block before he stopped.”
“Oh, my God! I’m so sorry,” Charlotte choked out.
Focusing on her, he watched tears flood her eyes and slide down her cheeks. Hunching over, she tried to smother the sobs wracking her body. Unexpected warmth coursed through him. He hadn’t felt anything for another woman since losing Jenny, but watching this lovely angel cry for him and his lost love tugged at his heart. Rising, he crossed the small space between them and knelt, meaning to gather her in his arms, but he stopped. He didn’t want to cause her more pain by touching her.
“Don’t cry, angel,” he whispered, brushing back a lock of silky hair from her face. His fingers accidentally contacted her skin.
She caught her breath and raised her head. Gazing at him with tear-wet eyes, she smiled tremulously. “There’s no pain now. Y-you feel almost happy.”
He grinned. “You’re good medicine for me, honey.”
She uttered a nervous little laugh then excused herself to repair her makeup in Marilee’s private bathroom. He shrugged into his jacket and stood gazing out the window above a pink and white painted bureau, wondering how Charlotte had come by her strange ability to pick up and interpret his lingering grief. When she emerged from the bathroom minutes later, he turned to see the redness around her eyes had been cleverly disguised.
Clearing her throat, she said, “We should rejoin the others.”
“Of course.” Crossing to the door, he opened it and stepped back, allowing her to pass. “I really would like to get your recipe for the cookies if it’s not a family secret.”
She shook her head, making her lustrous hair gently swing. “No, it’s not a secret. I’ll be happy to send it to you if you give me your email address.”
“Terrific!” He started to lay his hand at the small of her back but resisted the urge as they returned to the party.
The next morning, as promised, she emailed him her mama’s recipe.
CHAPTER TWO
Charlotte was on her knees giving Marilee Cantrell a bath in the girl’s specially equipped tub when the phone rang. Startled, she glanced at the instrument mounted on the wall several feet away. Placed there for emergency purposes, it was out of her reach and she decided against rising to answer it. Leaving her disabled charge alone in t
he tub was not a good idea. Even in shallow water, she could drown if she somehow slipped off the power lift that lowered and raised her from the tub.
“It makes noise,” Marilee said, pointing at the phone and squeezing her yellow rubber duck, her favorite bathtub toy.
Char smiled and nodded. “Yes it does, sweetie, but we are too busy to answer. Whoever it is can call back.”
“Call back, call back!” the girl yelled at the phone. As if in obedience, the machine went silent. “I made it stop.” Marilee clapped in triumph.
“Good for you. You told that noisy old phone.” Char laughed as she rinsed soap from the girl’s chest with a soft sponge.
“Good for me!” The thirteen-year-old with the mental ability of a three to four-year-old gleefully repeated the phrase over and over while Char washed her paralyzed lower torso and legs. She loved words of praise, something she seldom if ever heard from her mother, who treated her as an embarrassment to be hidden from public view.
Char set aside the sponge. “Okay, we’re all done. Time to get out of the water.” She turned the lever that allowed the water to drain away.
“No! I want to stay and play with duckie,” came the usual protest.
“But I have a pretty dress picked out for you. Pretty girls have to wear pretty dresses, don’t they?”
Marilee’s pout transformed into a gleaming smile. “Yes and I am a pretty girl.”
“You are a very pretty girl.” This was no exaggeration. Although handicapped with a body that only half worked and a damaged brain, God had blessed the child with a lovely face, baby-blue eyes and silky blond hair like her mother’s.
Char pressed a button on the lift’s battery-operated control unit and it slowly raised the molded plastic seat supporting her patient out of the water. When high enough to clear the tub, she stopped it and turned the swivel apparatus so that Marilee faced her. Then it was a mater of lifting her from the seat and settling her dripping form in the towel draped power wheelchair standing nearby.
Every time she performed this transfer Char wondered how much longer she would be able to handle the task by herself. Despite her disability, Marilee was growing and becoming heavier. Another year or two and she’d require a stronger woman, perhaps two, to raise her on and off the bathtub lift, among other things.
“I’m cold,” she said plaintively, shivering with a chill.
“I know, darling. Let’s get you dry.” Char gently patted her delicate skin dry with a fluffy towel. “There, is that better?”
“A little bit.” Eagerly slapping the padded leather arms of her chair, she demanded, “Now put on my pretty dress.”
“We need to take care of other things first. You know that, missy.” Getting complaints in reply, she wheeled her pouting charge into her spacious bedroom – located on the second floor adjacent to Char’s much smaller room — and saw to the necessities associated with paralysis, catheterization for one.
By the time they completed their morning routine and Marilee sat in her power chair, wearing the rose colored frock Char had chosen for her, both were ready for a break. Taking the glassed in elevator Lucas Cantrell had had installed before his death several years ago, they came out on the first floor in the back hallway directly across from Marilee’s play room. The room had once been Mr. Cantrell’s study but he’d ordered it converted into a cheery space for his only child, a testament to his love for her.
Positioning Marilee’s chair across from a large flat screen television, Char turned in the girl’s favorite cartoon channel. “Sweetie, I’m going to make a cup of tea. I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”
“Uh-huh.” Already engrossed in watching bright colored images on the screen, the girl didn’t even glance away.
Satisfied that she would be okay for a while, Char crossed the hall to the kitchen entry, located near the elevator. The doorway opened into a black and white ultra modern kitchen, reflecting Johanna Cantrell’s sleek, minimalist preferences, at odds with the Victorian mansion in Char’s opinion. She ran water into a tea kettle and set it to heat on the range top.
Moments later, she sat perched on a stool at the long, black-marble-topped island sipping her tea when the phone rang. She stiffened, immediately wondering if it was the caller who’d rung earlier. She set her cup down and crossed to where the phone stood on a corner of the countertop. Lifting the handset, she glanced at the caller ID and read Tristan Jameson’s name.
Her heart speeded up. She’d received an email from Tristan soon after sending him her mother’s cookie recipe. He’d thanked her and wished her happy holidays. Disappointed but at the same time relieved because he hadn’t asked to see her, she’d thought that was the end of their brief acquaintance. What did he want, she wondered.
On the third ring, she answered, “Hello.”
“Hi, Charlotte. This is Tristan Jameson.”
“Hi. H-how are you? Are you having trouble with the cookie recipe?”
He laughed. “None at all. Am I catching you at a bad time?”
“No. Um, did you call earlier?”
“Yes, about an hour ago. When you didn’t answer, I figured you were busy with Marilee.”
“I was giving her a bath. I couldn’t leave her alone in the tub.”
“Of course you couldn’t. Listen, I have tomorrow off and I’m planning to do some Christmas shopping uptown. How would you and Marilee like to come along?”
“Oh, y-you’re kind to think of us, but we can’t go.”
“Why not? Do you two have a hot date with some other guy?”
A laugh burst from her throat. “Hardly, but I’d need Mrs. Cantrell’s limousine to pick us up, and she’s out of town. I’m not allowed to call for the limo without her permission.”
“You don’t need it. I’ll pick you up.”
“But, but you’d have to take the wheelchair and –”
“I know Marilee has a power chair but isn’t there also a portable wheelchair I could collapse and stow in the back of an SUV?”
“Well, yes, but I’d need to bring along other supplies too. And, and I don’t like being in huge crowds.”
“Hey, it’s cold out. You’ll wear a heavy coat, won’t you? That should keep you from touching people.”
True, but she’d still be bombarded by others’ emotions, although not nearly as much as with physical contact. She wanted to make more excuses not to go; then she thought of how much Marilee would love an outing, something she rarely got to enjoy.
“Could we visit a toy store?” she asked, swallowing her misgivings.
“How about two?” he replied, satisfaction in his voice. “There’s a Disney Store and a Lego Store by Times Square. Will they do?”
She couldn’t help smiling. “They’ll do fine. Do you know how to get here?”
“Sure. I’ve been to Cantrell House for family gatherings when Lucas was still alive and a couple times afterward on Marilee’s birthday. Not since you’ve been there, though. I’d remember you.” There came a short pause. His voice sounded strained when he spoke again. “You must have taken up residence sometime during the past two years.”
Knowing how torturous that period had been for him, she cleared her throat to relieve the sudden tightness. “That’s right. I’ve been with Marilee a little over eighteen months. Um, what time do you want to pick us up tomorrow?” He suggested ten in the morning and she agreed.
He arrived as promised the next day in a large, dark green SUV. Peeking out a decorative window beside the mansion’s imposing front door, she watched him pull to a stop and step out of the vehicle. Casually dressed in a charcoal-gray peacoat, white turtleneck and faded jeans, he made her heartbeat quicken. When he rang the bell she opened the door with a mix of nervousness and excitement.
“Morning,” he said, golden brown hair fluttering in the breeze, much like her heart when he smiled, forming a dimple to the right of his mouth. She’d noticed it at the Christmas party and found it just as endearing now as she had then.
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“Good morning.” Struggling to conceal how he affected her, she smiled in return and invited him in. As he stepped past her she caught a warm whiff of spicy cologne.
“You’re in the mood, I see,” he remarked, pivoting to look at her and motioning at her red sweater with reindeer prancing across the front. “Looks good on you.” He smiled and winked. “But I’m sure anything would.”
“Thank you.” Nerves jumping at his compliment, she tore her gaze away. “Um, we’re not quite ready. I need to get Marilee bundled up.”
“Let me help. I’ve got a way with kids.”
“All right. She’s watching cartoons. This way.” Pointing toward the back of the house, she walked beside him down the hall, drinking in his scent again. It gave her an insane desire to rub her nose against his throat.
When they stepped into the playroom Marilee glanced their way and broke into a wide smile. “Tris!” she squealed. “Char said you are coming. I’m glad!”
Tristan crossed to her chair, bent and gave her a hug, which she enthusiastically returned. “How’s my favorite cousin?”
“I’m fine. We’re going to see toys?”
“We sure are, cupcake.”
She giggled. “You silly! I’m not a cupcake.”
“But you’re sweet as one.” He tweaked her turned up nose, making her giggle again, and straightened. “First, we’d better put your coat on. It’s cold outside.” Turning to Char, who stood admiring how he charmed Marilee, he waggled his eyebrows. “Well, Char, want to bring me her coat?”
Flustered by his teasing use of her nickname, she stammered, “Y-yes. I’ll get it.” She hurried into the hall, went to the closet under the grand staircase and grabbed Marilee’s pink puffy coat, knitted cap and mittens along with her own wraps. Hearing a high-pitched giggle accompanied by a baritone laugh, she returned to find both cousins engrossed in the antics of cartoon characters on the TV.
“Sorry to interrupt your fun but we’d better get moving if we’re going to have much time to shop.”