Once Upon a Star

by Nora Roberts

  There was no name, only the simple initial “L.”

  The tropical sun was clear and golden as the small sailboat cleaved the shining waves. The man at the tiller lifted his arm. “Look there, darling! A pod of whales!”

  “Where, Rees?” As the prow knifed through the warm, tropical waters, Lily shaded her eyes from the bright sun and gazed out over the dancing waves.

  “Oh! I see them now.”

  The sleek backs of the ocean giants glistened as the waves foamed and washed over them, darker shapes against the myriad blues and grays of the sea. One burst upward in a flash of strength and joy, then splashed back into the sea in a rainbow spray. A moment later she saw the misted-feather plume of its spouting.

  “Can we get closer, Rees?”

  He smiled at her from his place at the tiller, his eyes darker blue than the Pacific waters, his teeth white against his tanned skin. “As close as is safe. I’ll not take any chances with you, my love.”

  Or the baby to come, Lily thought, smiling to herself. She hadn’t told him yet. She wanted to be sure—but in her heart she already was. It would be a daughter, the first of the two children that she would bear him. Their son would be named Rees, like his father. But this one would be a girl, blond and dimpled, with laughing blue eyes. Her name would be Portia, of course. That was the name Lily had read in the records at the Star House Museum.

  The small sailboat cut through the sparkling sapphire waters. Lily turned her face up to the warm December sun. Rising up in the distance, were the emerald-green humps of the Sandwich Islands, where they now made their permanent home.

  In the eighteen months since their marriage, they had sailed to exotic ports of call, but now they had come back to Lahaina. If she strained her eyes, she could almost make out the white pillars of their home in the lush green hills above the town.

  With the glorious flowers and balmy air, it was strange to think that it would be Christmas in little more than a week; but here everything was different—just as she was, since falling in love with Rees Tregarrick. Every day her love for him grew deeper, more boundless than the oceans they had roamed.

  She glanced up at him, tall and tanned, against the azure sky. How handsome he looked in his white shirt, with the neck open at his strong throat and the sleeves rolled up against his sinewy arms. Lily’s heart swelled with love for her husband. With gratitude to him, for the joy and love he gave her—and to fate, for enabling her to turn his life around as well.

  It felt odd to know the outcome of their love story. That she and Rees would grow old together, surrounded by their children and grandchildren—and that someday, some of their descendants would return to Cornwall and St. Dunstan, and settle down in the little village whose cobbled streets and seaswept vistas she knew so well. To know that one of their granddaughters would marry Pen Trelawny, of Old Cross Farm, and their line would produce the eager young Portia Trelawny who ran the Star House Museum. A cousin would wed a Scots-Irish American named Malcolm Kendall and move to Arlington. But all that was still to come.

  It would be many years, many generations until the circle of time, of fate, would be complete.

  At the moment Lily was far more interested in the present than the past or future. They watched the whales at play for a while, and then Rees set their sail for a small and private island that they had made their own secret trysting place. He cut through the opening in the reef and dropped anchor in the sheltered lagoon.

  The sands were white as sugar, the foliage as bright as the emeralds in Lily’s wedding ring. Beyond them a crystal waterfall poured over a verdant green ledge like a veil of spangled tulle. Flowers garlanded the open-air bower Rees had built for her with his own hands, and tiny jeweled birds flitted past purple plumeria and deep crimson hibiscus, and the startling scarlet red of the high poinsettia hedges.

  Lily knew she would never become jaded to the beauty of her adopted homeland. Or to her feelings for Rees. The how and why of their meeting was something they never discussed any longer. It was beyond their fragile human understanding.

  Perhaps there were times—and places—Lily thought, when the barriers between past and present touched and mingled, like tendrils of fog melting into one another. Perhaps she and Reese had met on Yearning Head at such a magical moment.

  Or perhaps the old St. Dunstan legend was true that, if someone longed for something with all their heart and wished for it in the crosswinds at Yearning Head, the wish would be granted. Theirs certainly had. Lily and Rees took it for what it was—a gift.

  He made love to her in the bower, with dappled sunlight kissing their bodies and the music of the waves against the reef. He cupped her breasts in his hands and showered her face with heated kisses. His eyes shone bluer than the sun-tossed sea and as clear of the shadows that had haunted them.

  He touched her cheek. “No regrets, Lily?”

  “Not a one.”

  Rees kissed her hand. “Every morning and every night, I thank God for sending you to me. I don’t understand how it came about.” His fingers stroked her skin. “I don’t care. It’s enough to know you are here with me now.”

  “And to think you tried to send me away.” She laughed softly.

  “I was a fool,” he said, pressing his mouth against her breast, teasing the tender tip until she groaned and shifted beneath him.

  “I wouldn’t have gone,” she told him as he slid his hand between her legs. She gasped in a deep breath. A single stroke of his thumb had her quivering with need. “Nothing you could have said or done, Rees Tregarrick, would have rid you of me. We are fated to be together.”

  The western sky turned to gold. The perfumed breeze caressed their bodies, as Lily and her beloved sipped wine and watched the tropical sun make its sudden plunge below the horizon. Stars sprang out against the velvet night. Huge, swirling globes of light, against a dome of sky like a hollowed-out sapphire. The sea glittered darkly around them, while night birds called and the surf murmured a soft lullaby. Not a Van Gogh canvas. Lily told herself, but a painting by Gauguin. Paradise before the Fall.

  Setting down her crystal wineglass, she wound her arms around Rees’s strong neck and arched herself against him. “Make love to me, darling.”

  His embrace tightened. “All night long, if you desire.”

  And he did, with all the skill and ardor he possessed. Afterward Lily smiled as she lay cradled in Rees’s arms, sheltered and warmed by the heat of his body. He returned her smile and followed it with a passionate kiss.

  “I love you, Lily Tregarrick.”

  “I love you more.”

  “Impossible!” he whispered, kissing her temple, her cheek, her soft and rosy lips.

  The loneliness and sorrows of the past had been banished forever. Heart to heart, soul to soul, they celebrated their deepening love and joy in one another, all through the starry, starry night.