by Luanne Rice
Glancing at Chloe, Dylan ruled out the middle two. He steamed, thinking it must have been the first and last: using his niece. Jane had her arm around Chloe’s shoulders, and Dylan noticed the upset in both of their eyes.
“He surfs in Newport,” Chloe explained. “That must be what he’s doing here. Look how blond and tan he is.”
Dylan wanted to tell her he was a fake, but he held himself back. He also wanted to walk across the wharf and shove the hot dog down his throat, but he held himself back from that, too.
“He’s the one,” Mona said, touching Dylan’s wrist, “who rode his dirt bike through the orchard. He tore up the roots!”
“He’s the one?” Dylan echoed. Now, as if the guy could feel the energy emitting from their group, he looked their way. Chloe was blocked from his sight by Jane, but the guy caught Dylan staring at him. Over the years, Dylan had mastered the cop’s stare: eyes deader and harder than any shark. He actually saw the blond guy flinch.
“Don’t say anything to him,” Chloe begged.
“You should arrest him,” Mona said. “Honestly, Uncle Dylan—he’s really bad. He really did something awful . . .”
“Mona,” Jane warned. “Let Chloe decide what she wants to do, okay?”
“I just hate him,” Mona said hotly. “For being such a jerk to my friend.”
“Chloe,” Dylan said. “Do you want me to talk to him?”
Chloe shook her head. When they looked again, the surfer had abandoned his spot—one of the top trolling sites in New England, Bannister’s Wharf on a warm summer night—and was walking quickly away. Dylan had him in his sights and watched him with a pitiless gaze.
“What’s his name?” he asked.
“Zeke,” Mona said as Jane and Chloe stood silently aside.
Dylan wanted to go after him for the trees and their roots, for his niece and whatever he had done to hurt her. But he knew by Jane’s tenderness, by the way she was enfolding Chloe as if she were a baby bird and Jane had wings, that that would just make things worse for Chloe right now.
Dylan loved Chloe, and he wanted to protect her the way he would have his own daughter.
The jewelry store was just down the wharf. Holding Jane’s hand, he led the kids through the door. He pointed to the locket around Jane’s neck, and he asked the sales clerk for two just like it. His heart was very full as he saw the happiness in Chloe and Mona’s eyes. Even fuller, as he saw the satisfaction in Jane’s. His eyes darted to her locket; he couldn’t help himself, wondering whether she really had the picture of a little girl inside, or whether it was of some lover she hadn’t yet let go of.
Dylan considered it his job to chase away any bad guys from his niece; he considered it his duty to get Jane to let go of any and all old lovers. He hoped to accomplish that tonight.
When the girls asked him to take the price of the sterling silver lockets off their next paychecks, he just laughed and shook his head.
“They’re a present,” he said. Isabel would have wanted it that way, he knew.
CHAPTER 22
Before leaving Newport, Chloe wanted to take a ride past Isabel’s grandparents’ old house. So they bought ice-cream cones at Newport Creamery, then headed back down the hill. Out Thames Street, around the corner and down the stretch past the Ida Lewis Yacht Clubs and Harbor Court—the music of clanking halyards and boats at their moorings coming through the open windows—past Hammersmith Farm . . .
“The summer White House,” piped up Chloe from the back seat. “When John F. Kennedy was president.”
“That’s right,” Jane said. “When I first got my license, I’d drive down to Newport with my sister, and we’d always try to see into the yard—looking for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. We’d always wish we’d see her walking along the road, on visits home to see her mom.”
“What would you have done?”
“Offered her a ride,” Jane said.
“My mother was always proud of the fact the first Catholic president got married right here in Rhode Island,” Dylan said.
Chloe snorted. “Grandma is weird.”
Everyone chuckled. Dylan drove them onto Ocean Drive—the long, magical expanse of open road, with rocky coves and hidden bays and the entire Atlantic Ocean on the right. The smell of salt and rockweed and a damp mist blew in; they might have been on a ship at sea. Dylan pointed into the darkness, where black waves broke into white spume.
“Breton Tower used to be out there,” he said. “And until not so many years ago, the America’s Cup races were held here in Newport.”
“Curse Dennis,” Jane said of Dennis Connor, the skipper who had lost the cup. “For a while, that was the state motto.”
“Rhianna always talks about the sailors she used to screw—I mean, date,” Mona said. “Australian sailors who used to drink champagne out of their topsiders. Vile, if you ask me.”
“Better than surfers,” Chloe murmured.
Jane half turned, to look at her. She had been traumatized by the sight of Zeke. Jane had been so glad to be there with her. She thought of all the years she had missed—all the threats and dangers Chloe had faced along the way, without Jane to protect her. She had survived, nicely. Her adoptive parents had done a fine job. But the reality of Chloe’s survival and safety did nothing to address the longing Jane felt inside, to hold her little baby of a teenaged girl, and protect her from the rest of life’s trials.
“You okay?” Jane asked.
Chloe nodded, licking her ice-cream cone. The moment of closeness hadn’t ended; it shimmered between them. Chloe had taken the small locket out of its box, put it around her neck. Jane saw it glinting in the starlight coming through the truck window, and it made her feel as if she were in a small sailboat, sliding down the back side of an ocean wave.
Rounding the last curve on the drive, Chloe pointed.
“There’s Bailey’s Beach,” she said.
“Snobville,” Mona said.
“Isabel’s grandparents belonged. Its real name is ‘the Spouting Rock Beach Association.’ There’s a spouting rock somewhere. Isabel and I used to look for it. We thought it would be like a little beached whale, spouting away.”
“Rhianna would sell her soul to be invited in there,” Mona said. “And she would certainly class the place up, that’s for sure.”
Chloe kept her head turned, watching until the beach club disappeared from sight. They drove past Rough Point, Doris Duke’s great stone house, and several other gated estates, and finally they stopped in front of an enormous wall. Well-trimmed bushes and vines clung to the stones. An iron gate was partially opened, revealing a floodlit courtyard and magnificent limestone chateau, reminiscent of the Loire Valley.
“There it is,” Chloe said, breathless. “Maison du Soleil.”
“House of the Sun,” Mona said, leaning forward to stare.
“Are they still there?” Chloe asked.
“Your aunt’s family? Yes,” Dylan said.
“Do you visit them?”
“No,” he said.
“But you were their son-in-law,” Chloe said.
“I was,” he agreed, and Jane wondered whether Chloe picked up the subtle emphasis on the past tense. The sea breeze was less extreme here, blocked by the house and the trees and the wall. But Jane knew that the Cliff Walk ran along the other, seaward side of the property; years ago, she, Sylvie, and their mother had walked it many times. Until this minute, she hadn’t been sure which of the mansions belonged to Amanda’s family; but now that she knew, she remembered looking through the hedge, seeing women in white dresses sitting on a wide terrace. Had one of them been Dylan’s wife as a young girl?
“Can we go in?” Chloe asked.
“Yeah,” Mona said. “So I can tell Rhianna I partied with the elite?”
The car was so quiet; the only sound came from traffic rushing by on Bellevue Avenue. Jane sensed Chloe and Dylan connected by unspoken words that had to do with love and memories of Isabel. Jane closed her eyes, th
inking of the picture on Dylan’s refrigerator—those two smiling girls, their daughters.
“I don’t think so,” Dylan said after a long moment. “We might remind them of things they’d rather not think about.”
“Of what happened to Isabel and Aunt Amanda?”
Dylan nodded, just staring through the gate. Although it was wide open, Jane knew that to Dylan it felt locked and barred. Years in New York without this young girl in the back seat had taught her that feeling very well. She reached across the seat and touched his thigh.
His hand closed over hers. Jane felt the presence of their daughters in the truck. For, although Isabel was four years gone, her spirit tonight was as alive as Chloe and Mona’s. Jane breathed and took the girl into her heart. She glanced back, to look at Chloe. To her amazement, Chloe was staring at the back of her head, as if willing Jane to turn around.
Jane’s heart skipped a beat. She wanted this night, this moment to go on forever. The lie she was living with Dylan and Chloe suddenly seemed enormous, a weight she could carry no longer. If Mona weren’t with them, she would tell the truth right this minute. As it was, she had to hold it inside a little longer.
And she did.
Mona was spending the night at Chloe’s, so they dropped the girls off in her driveway. Tired and happy, they gathered their things and waved good-bye before walking inside. A woman leaned out the back door, waving.
“Sharon,” Dylan said, hitting the horn lightly and waving. “My brother’s wife.”
“Chloe’s . . .” Jane tried to say, but couldn’t get the word out: mother. The woman looked pleasant, gentle, suburban. What did that even mean, Jane wondered? That she wasn’t wearing a skinny black tank top?
“Tell me about that jerk Zeke,” Dylan said as he drove the quarter mile to his house.
Jane shivered, coming almost face-to-face with the woman who had raised her daughter. She tried to concentrate on Dylan’s question, but she was too shaken up.
“Keeping her confidence?” he asked. “I guess that’s right. Let her tell me or her parents herself, when she’s ready.”
“Do you remember, at the start of this evening,” Jane asked as he parked the truck in front of his red barn, her heart racing so hard she was sure it was going to burst, “when I said I had something to tell you?”
“Yes,” he said. “And I told you I had something to tell you, too.”
“I have to talk to you,” she said, gazing across the truck seat.
He nodded, then let himself out of the cab. He came around the front and opened Jane’s door, never taking his eyes off her. He put his arms around her, pulled her close, and touched his forehead to hers. The orchard was alive around them. Crickets sang and an owl called in the distance.
“Will you believe me,” he said, “if I tell you that I want to hear it all, every word, but that I have to kiss you first?”
She frowned, smiled, felt her heart bump. If only she could just get the words out. “I believe you,” she said. “Because I feel the same way.”
And then he kissed her. And all her plans and intentions to do the right thing and tell him were put on hold.
They went upstairs. It wasn’t awkward or forward, because they’d been aiming toward it all night, maybe even since the first day they’d met. Jane tried to shut her mind down and stop the words in her head—because her body was winning out. Heat and chills coursed all through her body. She had to tell him, she knew she had to tell him. And then the harder she tried, the more her mind worked. She wondered how many times he had climbed these stairs with Amanda. Maybe it was all a way of stalling—because she was terrified to tell him the truth.
Everything registered: the old sepia-toned photographs on the wall, the newer framed photos on the bureau. She searched the new ones, found that they were all of Isabel and Chloe, Eli and Sharon—there were none of Amanda. She looked around the room—comfortable and old-fashioned, very masculine.
“Dylan?” she said, trying to form the words.
“Yes?”
“That thing I have to tell you? It’s important.”
He nodded. And he kissed her again.
A big brass bed, heavy maple furniture, a pair of muddy boots leaning on their side, a pile of shirts on a chair. A bay window overlooked the orchard; gazing out, Jane could see that the house was built on a slight hill, and the fruit trees sloped away, into a gentle valley. A stream ran through the land; she could hear the rush of water, see the black and silver flash, reflecting the stars.
Dylan came up behind her, encircling her with his arms from behind. They felt so solid, and she leaned back into his chest. She rocked there for a minute, feeling the tension of their bodies pressing together. She tried to get him to bend, but he wouldn’t; they both laughed softly.
“Dylan?”
“Forget it,” he murmured. “Whatever it is. Forget—”
Turning around, she kissed him on the lips. He tasted of salt spray and, faintly, of tobacco. She gripped his biceps with her fingers. He reached up and slid the thin straps of her black top down. The motion felt erotic and left her weak in the knees. Standing by the open window, they undressed each other.
Jane wanted his hands on every inch of her skin. She leaned into the calluses on his hands. She thought of how hard he worked in the orchard, driving his broken heart into a place he could stand. She did the same in her kitchen. Her own hands were scarred and burned from trying to bake away her longing for Chloe.
He leaned over, kissed her locket—and she gasped, because he didn’t even know what was in it, but he knew it had to be precious to her. He kissed her breasts. She hadn’t been touched this way in so long, she felt her heart being sliced open. Undoing the buttons on his jeans, she pushed them down. He wasn’t wearing underwear.
She smiled, but they didn’t speak about it. They walked to the bed. Holding hands, it felt so right and comfortable, they might have been walking to beds together their whole adult lives. But at the same time she felt she was drowning in passion, and she wasn’t sure she could swim safely to shore.
“I haven’t,” she said as he supported her waist and lowered her onto the bed, “done anything like this in a very long time . . .”
“Neither have I.”
They were side by side, heads on the same pillow. Jane blinked slowly. She wanted to see everything and read all his thoughts in his eyes. He kissed her again, pulling her against him, and the thick hair on his chest tickled her nipples and made her feel unspeakably sexy, and she couldn’t help smiling through the kiss.
“Wow,” she said.
“Me, too,” he said, running his hand down the curve of her side, touching her legs. She quivered, doing the same to him. Her fingers found his scar, and she hiked up on her elbow to first look at and then kiss it.
It felt hard and jagged, raised like a piece of rope. And on either side, all the way down to his knee, were the rungs of a ladder, the teeth of a zipper: the stitches that had held his tissue and bone together.
“This is where they shot you,” she said, feeling the chill of death.
“Yes.”
“Thank God you’re still here,” she said.
“In a lot of ways,” he said, stroking her face, “I was already dead when it happened. I had stopped believing in love a long time before. And I’m not sure I started believing in it again till this spring.”
“You believe in it now?” Jane asked, kissing his neck.
“Yeah,” he said.
And then he seemed to set about making her believe in it, too. He caressed every spot on her body. She felt his lips, hot on her skin. All those years in big, bad, New York City, and she was experiencing these things for the first time in the countryside of her youth. She arched into his touch, shimmering under his fingertips, her entire body wanting more.
He touched her between her legs, and she felt as hot and wet as a garden, and she reached down and felt him harder than she could imagine. Their eyes locked, she couldn’t even
dream of looking away, and he entered her.
She bit her lip. Tears filled her eyes, because she felt locked into him, inseparable physically. Their hearts were touching. She reached up, her fingers trembling, and touched his cheek.
“Jane, you don’t know . . .” he began. “I’ve never felt this way . . .”
“I know,” she said, feeling him so deeply inside her. “Neither have I . . .”
Their bodies were alive and wide awake, on fire for each other. Jane closed her eyes, reached back to grab the brass bars of his bed. A cool breeze came in the window, cooling her skin, making her arch her back just to stay close to him.
She couldn’t stand to have the amazing, wonderful feelings keep building inside her—a whole lifetime of love held in, held back—and neither could he, because they both held on and let go at the same time, as the stars danced in the trees and blazed just outside the window, where white curtains lifted softly, softly, in the evening breeze.
Stunned and depleted, yet so full, Jane lay back on the pillow. She saw pinpricks of light behind her eyelids. Were they stars or something else? Dylan was right there, right beside her. He touched her face. His lips were moving, he was whispering, and she heard him say:
“I told you I had something to tell you . . . I’m falling in love with you, Jane. That’s what I wanted to say . . . wanted to tell you.”
Jane grasped his hand, kissed his fingers. Her mind swam, but with bliss and emotion, not coherent thought. The truth of Chloe pulled at her gut, like an undertow trying to pull a swimmer into the deepest part of the sea. Her body was spent, but her soul was just starting up.
She must have slept.
Dreams spun through her mind. She saw the orchard, stars in the trees, and an open window in Chloe’s attic, more stars lying on shelves inside . . . and the stars came to life . . . and they were girls, dancing . . . Chloe and Isabel . . . and Jane saw them all together, a family at a table, Jane and Dylan and Chloe and Isabel . . . and she felt his kisses on her lips and his touch on her collarbone . . . and she dreamed of the look in his eyes, that she had seen when he didn’t think she’d noticed, in the truck earlier, when the girls had asked about her locket . . . the expression revealing his concern that she wore someone else, another man’s picture, always close to her heart . . . but it’s not a man, she wanted to tell him now . . . it’s not a man at all: It’s what I have to tell you . . . it’s my daughter . . . it’s . . .