“Oh,” Kaitlin murmured, so glad that Timothy was going to be okay.
And she didn’t know why she resented the fact that Brendan had been the big hero of the day.
Al came in, announcing that Timothy seemed to be doing well. There was more cheering, but the party was winding down.
Gram found Kaitlin and gave her a big kiss and a teary-eyed thank you. Then she kissed the rest of her family, and she and Al departed for their honeymoon.
There was more dancing, but soon the guests began to drift away.
Kaitlin felt that the responsibility of holding down the fort until the very end was hers, so she said goodbye to the last of the guests, then slipped off her shoes and collapsed into a chair at one of the tables. Her parents were beside her, and she knew that Brendan was behind her, waiting.
Politely, the perfect escort.
The hero of the whole affair.
Why was she so resentful? Or was it just that she was tired?
“I think that’s the end of it,” Brendan murmured. “I’ll get the car and meet you out front.”
She nodded without looking at him. Her mother thanked him. Kaitlin wasn’t sure if she was glad her parents were there, or if she just wished that she could be alone with him to tell him…
Tell him what?
She wanted to scream at him, to smash her fists against his chest. And she wasn’t even sure why.
“Tired?” her mother asked her softly.
“Exhausted.”
“And you’ve got two to go,” Maeve reminded her.
“But it’s fun, it’s great—”
“And exhausting,” her dad said, laughing.
“Everything was perfect except for poor Mr. Tyron,” Kaitlin said.
“Let me warn you, Kaitlin,” her dad said. “There’s always some little trauma at a wedding.”
“I’m not going to allow any more little traumas,” she said firmly. And when her parents exchanged amused glances, she insisted, “I’m not!”
Neither of them corrected her. They had reached the door, and Brendan was there with the car. Kaitlin’s dad opened the door for her and her mother, and Kaitlin slid into the seat next to Brendan.
And then she didn’t know what happened.
Suddenly Brendan was waking her up. She blinked furiously as she realized that she was sleeping with her head on his lap, and they were parked in front of her house.
“Kaitlin, your parents have already gone in.”
“Oh. Oh!” Her fingers were curled around his thigh. She felt his warmth, the slight movement of a muscle.
She jerked upright.
“Let me help you—”
“No. No, please, I’m awake. I’m going in. I—thank you. I do appreciate you serving as my escort,” she said coldly.
She started to slide out of the car, but he caught her arm and pulled her back. Despite the darkness, she could see the glitter in his eyes. “If you’re so damn appreciative, why are you being so rude?”
“I’m not. I’m just tired.”
“I’ll walk you to the door.”
“No! It’s all right!”
But he was already out of the car and coming around to open her door. She jumped out quickly, not wanting to give him an excuse to touch her.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” he demanded.
“Nothing. I don’t know.” She backed away from him. “I just—I just think we need to put a little distance between us.”
“Kaitlin, we’ve got years of distance.”
“Right. Well, thank you, good night.”
His jaw twisted. “You know, Kaitlin, once, just once, I’d love to hear from you when you didn’t want something.”
“You said to call you—”
“You called me because your family was here. Because you didn’t feel like dredging up a date who meant nothing to you. A date who would expect to be entertained like any other guest.”
“What difference does it make?” she demanded.
He came close, threading his fingers into her hair and pulling her against him before she could protest. “A lot, Kaitlin. It makes a lot of difference to me.”
“We’re not all perfect like you,” she said.
“Like me? You think I’m perfect?”
“Always. The perfect damn hero.”
“You’re mad at me over Mr. Tyron!” he said incredulously.
“I’m not!” she gasped, horrified. “My God, I wouldn’t want anything to happen to anyone—”
“But you wish someone else had seen to him, right?”
She was stubbornly silent.
“Kaitlin, it’s part of what I do! I have to know emergency medical procedures. I have divers who get injured. Things go wrong.”
“I’m not mad! I’m delighted that you could help. I’m just—”
“Just what?”
“Sick of you being so damn perfect,” she muttered.
His hold tightened, and she thought he was going to kiss her. And though she was angry and confused, she wanted that kiss. She wanted the fierce heat of his lips. She wanted to taste the anger and the passion, and she wanted to let it rise and simmer and explode….
But he didn’t kiss her. He released her. “Good night, Kaitlin. I guess I’ll see you in Massachusetts.”
“Right,” she murmured. “In Massachusetts.”
He opened her door and waited for her to go inside. She did, then closed the door and locked it.
Her mother and father had apparently gone to bed, because the house was dark.
She sank slowly into the couch. Her cheeks were damp, and she touched them, amazed to realize that she was crying.
And she didn’t even know why.
She was afraid, she realized. Afraid of taking a chance, afraid of reaching out.
And yet she wanted Brendan. She wanted to talk to him, to make love with him. She wanted to lay her head against his shoulder and cry for the past.
And maybe find a future.
When Brendan dropped Kaitlin and her parents off, he didn’t feel like returning to his apartment. It was a nice place, but it felt cramped to him. It felt like the city. It was late, but the Upper Keys weren’t very far away; his house was only an hour and forty-five minutes from Kaitlin’s place.
But when he reached his place in the Keys, he knew that that wasn’t really where he wanted to be, either. He wanted the water, he realized.
He changed his suit for jeans and a T-shirt, then walked to the dock. His yacht, the Lilliputian, was gently rocking in her berth.
He hopped aboard. He knew he wasn’t going anywhere; he just wanted to sit on the open deck and smell the sea breeze.
The yacht was a fine piece of craftsmanship. The woodwork was beautiful, the two staterooms were great, and even the smaller crew cabins were nice. She was equipped with all the latest in sonar devices for underwater discovery, and she could carry all the diving gear and paraphernalia he needed. When he had a big find he had to call out the heavy-duty salvage vessels, but the Lilliputian was the perfect vessel for discovery. There was nowhere he would rather be.
He went down the steps to the main cabin and headed to the galley for a beer, then went on deck, popped the top, sat down, leaned back and looked up at the stars. It was a beautiful night. It had been a great night for Lizzie Boyle’s wedding.
“To you, Lizzie,” he said softly, lifting his can. Few women were so wise, he thought. She was a very great lady.
And she was what Kaitlin would be, he thought, years and years from now.
He wished suddenly that she was here with him. It seemed that they were always fighting when they were together. They would just start to get close to the truth, then they would erupt in some argument, and the things that should have been said were left unvoiced.
If only she was here now…
But she wasn’t.
He closed his eyes and felt the air move over him. It was soothing, but not soothing enough to wash away the past. He’d l
ed such a great life in so many ways. Nice parents who supported him. Things always seemed to fall his way. He was naturally athletic, and good at academics, too. His grandparents had been Irish immigrants, just like Kaitlin’s. They had believed deeply in the American dream and tried hard to give their children everything they’d never had. His grandfather had gone over history with him, then geography, and once Brendan found the oceans of the world, his dream had been born.
Best of all, he’d had Kaitlin. The most beautiful and exquisite creature he had ever seen, with her soft blue eyes and radiant hair, her pride, her laughter and her passion. No one could have asked for more, but he had more anyway. His cousin Sean.
Sean O’Herlihy had been an actor. From kindergarten on, it had seemed that Sean knew his dream. He could read circles around the rest of the family by second grade. He studied literature, and he studied plays. He loved the great Irish playwrights. He wanted one day to perform at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, but he wanted to act on Broadway, too.
By their senior year, Sean was the hero of the high school. He played MacBeth, Romeo, anything of Shakespeare’s. He produced and directed and starred in Behan’s Hostage. He was offered several prestigious scholarships, a role on a soap opera and bit movie parts. He could mimic any accent, but his Irish was naturally the best.
For eighteen years, they had been more than cousins. They had been best friends.
Brendan would never forget the last time he’d seen Sean alive. They’d gone to the park in Rutland, just to walk. School was over; it was almost time to say goodbye. Not forever—just to the old way of life. Within a month Brendan and Kaitlin would be married and headed south, and Sean would be off on his own, headed for school in New York. Sean was enthusiastic about the bachelor party he was planning. When Brendan assured him that he was really far past the need for a blonde to jump out of a cake, Sean laughed.
“Aye, sure and begorrah!” he said and leaped atop a rock. Then he rested his chin in his hands and sighed. “No girls out of cakes, Brendan. I couldn’t find one to compare with Kaitlin, anyway. You’re a lucky man, you know. She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen, and bright and sweet to boot. And I can’t wait for the wedding. It will be solemn and regal and wonderful, and then it will be time to party, party, party!”
Brendan laughed and sat across from him on another boulder. “Party time, all right. We’re going to be married. It’s what I want more than anything, and sometimes I still can’t believe it’s really going to happen.”
“Believe it, my boy,” Sean told him; then his handsome, freckled face went serious. “Brendan, it gives me goose bumps just thinking about it. I’m going to be your best man. I can’t wait. I think I’m more excited than either of you. And I love her, Brendan, you know that. I feel like she’s my relative already. You’re lucky. You’ve got love. When you’ve got love, you’ve got everything.”
“Yeah, I know.”
And they had sat there on those boulders, then skipped rocks across the creek the way they had done when they were kids. They had talked about their plans, their dreams. And they had promised that they would always come home.
“I think home for you is going to be any patch of salt water,” Sean told Brendan.
“And home for you is going to be any stage, with the footlights shining on you.”
“‘All the world’s a stage!”’ Sean quoted. “Sometimes comedy, and sometimes tragedy. But you’ve got to have the tragedy, you know. Otherwise there couldn’t be heights of the ridiculous and the sublime, right?”
“Right.”
They gripped hands suddenly. “We’ll always be blood,” Sean vowed, grinning. “Sharing dreams.”
“Always blood,” Brendan agreed. “Sharing dreams.”
But there would be no more dreams for them to share. The next week his mother had come by the dive shop where he was working for the summer. There were tears in her eyes, and it was the middle of the day, and right away he knew that something was terribly wrong.
Sean was dead. He had been hit by a truck driver and killed instantly.
Brendan had never cried like that before in his life. And there was more. There was the funeral. Sean, always so full of life, lay there cold and silent and still, and he wasn’t Sean anymore.
After that, nothing seemed right. If Sean was dead, then he shouldn’t be alive. He shouldn’t be able to feel the breeze, to see the sun, to smell the flowers.
Or Kaitlin’s perfume. Or touch her, or feel the softness of her hair sweep around him. When the first stunned agony faded, he became numb, and no one could touch him. He didn’t want to be touched. Nothing in his life had prepared him for losing Sean. He tried to understand that his aunt and his uncle and his other cousins were in the same pain, and he tried to understand that Kaitlin had loved Sean just as Sean had loved Kaitlin.
But he had known that he couldn’t go through with the wedding. No one expected them to marry as planned, anyway. Not so soon. Sean’s death was an incredible loss to both families, and everyone was going to have to struggle to go on.
But Brendan never quite got over it. When he talked to Kaitlin, he wanted to reach out to her. He wanted to drown in her whispers, in her tears, in her touch. He wanted to make love until he could feel nothing but the sweet ecstasy that would take him away, but he couldn’t go near her.
Because he shouldn’t be able to feel. Sean was dead. Sean would never feel again.
Brendan tried to bring himself back to her. But he still couldn’t stand the idea of a wedding. Because Sean should have been at the wedding. Should have been standing beside them.
In the end Brendan had lost Kaitlin, too. She was still with him, but he had lost her. Two years passed, and they were still together. Studying, learning, leaving high school far behind them, becoming adults. And planning a wedding again. Or, at least, he kept quiet while Kaitlin planned it.
And then he found her laughing in the arms of a friend. His friend.
He had exploded and left. The next thing he knew, he had signed up for the Navy and was knee-deep in basic training.
And wishing he could go back. Once he was away from her, he knew how deeply he loved her.
The service didn’t leave a guy much time for apologies. And he didn’t know what to say, anyway. Then he had heard from her. A very stiff and stilted letter, telling him that she felt obliged to let him know that she was expecting a child. He needn’t feel obligated to do anything about it.
He’d been able to come back then, feeling guilty, because he was thrilled. He had Kaitlin back. As his wife. And he was going to have a child, along with all the love he had discovered, nearly too late, that he needed so badly, the love that had sustained him. Quiet, undemanding, always there for him.
Then Kaitlin had lost the baby, but the news hadn’t reached him until he was in the middle of the Persian Gulf.
He’d wanted to be with her. He’d wanted to be with her so badly that it ate at his insides, but by the time the news reached him, she was already out of the hospital and he had months at sea ahead of him.
By the time he returned home, Kaitlin was distant. Untouchable. And in his heart he knew long before he received the official papers that she had withdrawn herself from him.
He had been twenty-two at the time. With nothing left except his pride.
“The stuff that goeth before a fall,” he reminded himself out loud. He finished his beer, staring at the stars. He thought of the years since then and the women who had passed through his life. The ones who had cared, the ones who had been casual.
He’d never been more than casual himself. He had never managed to fall out of love.
“And I still love you, Kaitlin,” he whispered softly to the darkness.
But how the hell did you start over after a past like theirs?
He had missed Sean so badly. It seemed an ironic shame that it had taken him all these years to understand what his cousin had known all along. Life was a mixture of laughter and of tear
s. And you were just lucky if you could be loved through them both.
Once upon a time, he had had a love that strong.
And now he wanted it back.
He sat for a minute, then smiled slowly and closed his eyes against the night breeze.
Thank God for all these weddings. He was going to have a chance to try to have it all one more time.
He was older and wiser, and this time he knew that love was everything. When it was offered, you had to reach for it, and grab it, then hold it tight, through the laughter and the tears.
Yes, love was everything….
Kaitlin was everything.
And he would have the chance to spend a lot more time with her next week.
With that thought in mind, he rose, threw his beer can away and patted the Lilliputian good night for the evening.
He was whistling as he headed to the house.
Chapter 8
Kaitlin arrived at the train station in a state of confusion.
Her parents had left just yesterday morning, she’d survived a meeting with Harley and Netty of Seashell Sunblock that afternoon, and then this morning she’d overslept, her taxi had gotten lost, and she had been afraid, what with the early morning traffic, that she was never going to reach her destination.
She did make it in time. Eight minutes before the train was due to leave.
She couldn’t wait to get on board. Into a small sleeper, alone. She could read, or sleep, or relax. Actually, she could even work, but the idea of relaxing, of grouping her forces, seemed too sweet. She didn’t need to work. Janis was on the job. Harley was as pleased with the finished commercial as his sister was, and the ad was already scheduled to air.
The doors to the train were open, and she trailed her wheeled baggage cart behind her as she hurried along. The conductor pointed out her car. When she reached it, the attendant helped her with her luggage, then took her ticket.
“O’Herlihy,” he muttered. He was a young man with sandy hair and light freckles. He flipped his reservation chart over and muttered her name again.
“You’re traveling alone?”
“Yes.”
“Okay…let’s see. What’s your first initial?”
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