by Judith Yates
It took all his strength to pull away. “I’d better go.”
“Go?” She clutched his arms to stop him, her expression tearing at his heart. “But I thought&h;”
“Just for now,” he reassured, cupping her face with his hands.
“It’s happening too fast between us, isn’t it?”
“Maybe.” He kissed her forehead.
Amy looked down at their entwined arms. “Paul, I’m not going to be here forever. I don’t want to leave with any regrets.”
“I don’t want you to, either,” he implored. “That’s why I should go now.”
“But you’ll come back?” she said, sounding unsure as she searched his gaze. “You won’t go dashing off to Richmond again or anything like that.”
Chuckling, he shook his head. “That tactic didn’t work. All I did was think about you.”
She smiled with obvious pleasure. “Good.”
This feminine grin had a mesmerizing effect, reminding him of all the things he found irresistible about her. “Don’t worry, I’ll be here for you. I’ll come back tomorrow afternoon—if you’d like.”
“I’d like.”
The provocative gleam in her eye, the seductive shadings in her voice stirred his desire anew. Leaving her was twice as hard now. But when he finally managed to drag himself away from the inn, Paul felt an optimism that helped soothe the unrequited burning in his loins. Feeling for all the world like a goofy, infatuated kid, he hopped into his pickup and gunned the engine. He couldn’t wait until tomorrow.
After years of keeping the pain of personal loss at bay, Paul found it exhilarating to be looking forward for a change. All he could think about was seeing Amy tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Of course, Amy’s stay in Tremont was limited, as she had pointed out herself. But he didn’t care. Who knew better than he that nothing lasted forever? He’d take this time with her, without reservation, for however long it was meant to last.
He was happily humming a tune from Bud’s jazz tape when he pulled into his driveway. Snead, barking and squealing, dashed out the door as soon as he unlocked it. While the dog attended to his business outside, Paul went into the kitchen for something cold to drink. As he opened the fridge, the pile of mail Dirk had collected caught his eye. He chuckled at the neat stack on the counter, with catalogs and magazines on the bottom and the envelopes arranged in order by size. His buddy was a supreme organizer.
Cracking open a can of cola, he began flipping through the Christmas cards and bills. At the bottom of the pile was a pale blue vellum envelope inscribed with a stylish handwriting he recognized all too well. It belonged to his ex-wife. Yet this was not Shelly’s annual family Christmas card—which she had dutifullysent him for the past four years. This looked like something else altogether, and it made him uneasy.
He started to tear open the envelope, but his fingers froze when he noticed the return address scrawled on the back flap. Paul was stunned. This letter had not come from Southern California, where Shelly and her family had been living for years. No, she had mailed this from a new address—an address in Washington, D.C.
Chapter Eight
Paul read Shelly’s brief note with disbelief.
Her husband, Bob Wickwire, had been promoted to the network’s Washington bureau, and they had recently moved to the city with their two boys. Shelly suggested they should all get together after the holidays.
All get together? He crumpled the note in his fist, unwilling to grapple with the cause for the Wickwires’ change of heart.
Mr. Snead barked outside the door. Paul let the dog in, tossing the pale blue wad of paper into the trash can. He wished he could trash the sudden flood of memories as easily. But they gushed over him with the megaton force of a broken dam. God, how he hated remembering that time.
The divorce had been so painful, so brutal, he had had to move a continent away in order to put it behind him. Even then, Shelly’s tearful pleadings, the bitter arguments with Wickwire and the sad, final goodbyes had all haunted his sleep for months. The fact that he’d been a popular local TV newsman at the time had added to the mess considerably. The responsible San Francisco newspapers’ coverage of his divorce was difficult enough. But the tabloids’ screaming headlines about love triangles and legal maneuvering plus the gossip media’s relentless hounding had shattered his privacy.
Paul plunked the empty soda can on the counter. “Don’t get sucked back into the past.” he admonished himself.
Not tonight of all nights. Not when he and Amy were just opening up to each other.
Mr. Snead followed him into the bedroom, gazing up lovingly as Paul kicked off his leather boots. Reaching down to rub the golden retriever’s neck, Paul decided not to answer Shelly’s note. Tomorrow he’d go back to the inn and arrange to see Amy as much as possible.
“The past is over and done with, Snead,” he said, giving the dog one last affectionate pat for the night. “We’re moving on.”
Amy sat in the dining room, nibbling at her breakfast as she reexamined what had happened last night with Paul. His fervent kisses and caresses had aroused in her an intense need to express her budding passion. She had never felt such a powerful rush of desire before—not even with Jeff.
And it scared her half to death.
She sipped hot coffee to warm herself against the room’s drafty chill. It was bitter cold outside as sporadic flurries sifted through the dreary, gray sky. The weather fit her mood to a tee. Because as much as she wanted to see Paul again, lingering doubts overshadowed her excitement. She couldn’t help if mistrust was ingrained in her nature. Amy had told him that about herself, and a whole lot more. But when all was said and done, what did she really know about Paul Hanley?
“Good morning, Amy. I hope you enjoyed your dinner last night.” Bernadette, dressed in Sunday-church clothes, sat at Amy’s table. “I can’t thank you enough for taking over in the Pub Room,” she added. “What a scare.”
“How’s Bud’s mother-in-law?”
“Mother-in-law&h; You mean the emergency?” Bernadette declared after a moment’s befuddlement.
“Is she all right?”
“Yes, yes. Everything seems to be fine. Bud will be back tonight.”
“If he needs more time, I don’t mind filling in again.”
“You’re a peach to offer. I’m sure you worked your you-know-what off last night.” Bernadette shuffled her chair closer to Amy’s. “You and Paul made a great team.”
Amy stiffened, wondering what, if anything, Bernadette had seen the night before. “He was a great help.”
“I’m glad you two are hitting it off so well.” Bernadette’s grin was of the Cheshire-cat variety.
“You think we are?”
“It looked that way to me.” The smile faded. “Am I wrong?”
Amy eyed the other woman thoughtfully. Perhaps Bernadette could help quiet her fears. “I like Paul,” she admitted. “Still, I don’t feel I know him. He says so little about himself.”
Bernadette nodded. “He tends to hold things inside. He always has.”
“I know he was married. Bridget and Maura have given me the impression it ended badly.”
“It did. And he’s been alone ever since.” The motherly compassion in the woman’s voice touched Amy.
“Bernadette, I have to ask you. Does he have a child?”
“Did Maura tell you that? She has no idea what she’s talking about, you know.”
“Then there were no children from the marriage?”
Bernadette looked uncomfortable. “You should be asking Paul these questions.”
She was probably right, but Amy couldn’t stop now. “I’m asking you.”
Bernadette shook her head. “If Paul had a child, I’d know about it, wouldn’t I?”
An awkward silence followed. Amy didn’t know what to say. Although she believed Bernadette, she felt something wasn’t quite right. She just couldn’t put her finger on what.
Finally
, Bernadette cleared her throat with a nervous cough. “Why don’t you come back with me to my cottage?” she suggested. “I have some things I’d like to show you.”
Amy was startled by this sudden shift. “What things?”
“Things you should have seen a long time ago.”
Bernadette urged Amy to grab a jacket for the short walk to the innkeeper’s cottage behind the inn. “Winter is here to stay. The weatherman on the radio says a big storm may be headed our way later this week. Hope you like snow, Amy. We get a lot of it out here.”
Despite her coat, the wind whipped right through Amy as she and Bernadette traversed the footpath leading to the ivy-trimmed clapboard cottage. With teeth chattering more from nervousness than from the cold, she stepped inside her father’s last home. The small rooms were attractive and toasty warm.
“Greg always teased me about keeping the furnace turned up so high. He’d say I had ice water in my veins.” Bernadette turned to her with a revealing glint in her eyes. “But he knew better.”
Bernadette’s candid comment startled her, yet touched her, as well. Clearly Bernadette had loved Greg very much, and it comforted Amy to know her father had not died a lonely man.
“Let’s go into the study,” Bernadette suggested after taking her coat. “Most of his things are in there.”
Amy followed her into a comfortable-looking room paneled in rich cherry. The worn leather sofa and chairs fit in well with the big fireplace and old-fashioned, multipaned casement windows. “This is very nice.”
“Your father loved this room. If he wasn’t at the inn, this would be where you’d find him.”
Drawn to the arrangement of framed photographs on the credenza, Amy studied them for a long time. The pictures were mostly of family—the Ryan family. One shot was of a younger Bernadette sitting on the hood of Greg’s old shiny Buick. She recognized school pictures of Maura and baby pictures of the grandchildren. And there were formal and candid shots from Bridget’s wedding. Apparently Greg Riordan had given the bride away.
Amy bit her lip and looked away. These photos were visual testament to a man’s rich family life—a life in which she had no part. Seeing them displayed this way in her father’s beloved inner sanctum felt like an unspoken affront.
Unnerved, Amy glanced up to find the older woman rummaging through a small closet. She soon emerged with a charcoal tweed jacket folded over her arm.
“This was Greg’s favorite piece of clothing. He had it sent from a shop near the Riordans’ ancestral home in Ireland.” Bernadette sighed as she sat on the old, leather couch. “He looked so handsome in it, Amy.”
“Did he?”
Nodding, Bernadette beckoned Amy to sit beside her. “Feel how fine the wool is.”
Amy’s hand skimmed over the wool tweed spread out on the woman’s lap. “It’s an excellent weave,” she whispered.
“It still smells like him a little,” Bernadette declared, lifting the jacket to rub against her cheek. Then she held it up to Amy. “Here, see for yourself.”
She hesitated for a moment, but Bernadette pressed the sport coat into her arms. Slowly she raised the fabric to her face until the subtle, lingering traces of wood smoke, peppermint and mellow tobacco filled her head. Tears of regret smarted in her eyes. She had no memory of this scent, this essence of her father. Yet it was as close to him as she would ever get for the rest of her life.
Blinking back her tears, Amy said the first thing that popped to mind. “He smoked a pipe?”
“Oh, yes, he enjoyed a good tobacco. And he loved collecting those pipes.” Bernadette pointed to a rack of carved pipes on top of the mantel. “They’re yours now, you know. This jacket, too,” she added. “And any other personal items you’d like to keep.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Amy said, taken aback.
Glancing around the room, she couldn’t imagine picking out keepsakes of a man she had scarcely known, a man who’d known next to nothing about her. When her glance came to the offending display on the credenza, she couldn’t bridle her resentment. “Surely your girls would like to have these mementos of my fa—of Greg.”
“But they rightly belong to you, dear.”
“I’m not so sure about that, Bernadette. Bridget and Maura are the ones with the special memories,” she insisted. “Greg’s things will mean more to them.”
Bernadette sat back in dismay. “If that’s the way you feel.”
Handing back the tweed jacket, Amy started to rise from the couch.
“Wait.” Bernadette tugged her back down. “I have something very important to show you.”
Although she was reluctant to deal with any more artifacts from her late-father’s life, she remained seated while Bernadette fetched something from the handsome antique desk near the credenza.
“You’ll have to keep this,” Bernadette told her when she returned to the couch. She was clutching a full-size, leather-bound photo album.
Amy watched in silence as Bernadette opened up the album on her lap. Turning to the first page, the older woman looked over at her. “Do you recognize the picture?”
Did she recognize it?
Her heart was in her throat as she gazed down at the photo of a giggly, pigtailed girl not more than five or six, sitting on the rugged shoulders of a dark-haired, smiling young man. He was standing beside a wooden-seat swing hanging from a thick-limbed old maple tree.
“Yes, I remember,” she murmured, unable to pull her eyes away the photograph. “I think it was taken after my father put the swing up for me in our backyard.”
“It’s a marvelous picture of you both. And you looked like him even when you were a baby.” Bernadette turned the page. “See.”
Amy stared hard at the pictures of her in the various stages of babyhood. She shook her head. “I had no idea he’d kept these.”
“Oh, Greg kept.many, many pictures of you, dear.” Bernadette shifted the album onto Amy’s lap. “Here, see for yourself.”
Time seemed to stop as Amy leafed through the pages of the photo album. She was amazed to find that it was totally dedicated to her. Surprise soon burgeoned into shock, however, when she realized the photographs went beyond her early-childhood years.
Included in the dozens of pictures were shots of her wearing her first-Communion dress; diving into the lake; dancing at her sixteenth birthday party; posing for her high school and college graduation portraits. She found the final few items even more stunning—snapshots from her agency’s grand opening party and of the day she moved into her own home.
“I don’t understand,” she gasped, her head spinning as she tore through the pages again. “My mother couldn’t have sent these pictures to him&h;she wouldn’t.”
Bernadette bristled. “Certainly not.”
“Then where did he get all of these? How did he get them?”
“You don’t have a clue, do you?”
Amy shook her head. How could she even guess? The album sitting in her lap defied belief.
“It was your stepfather—Thomas Windom. He’s been sending pictures to Greg for years.”
Amy gaped at the other woman in astonishment. “I can’t believe it. He never said a word to me.”
“Maybe he thought you wouldn’t want to know. And I bet he didn’t want your mother to know what he was doing.”
Bernadette’s point was well taken. Her mother would absolutely not abide any contact with Greg.
“Why would Thomas do it?”
“Your father called him a few months after he’d written to you about the inn,” Bernadette revealed. “Mr. Windom, bless his heart, tried to help Greg understand why you hadn’t answered his letter. After that, he started sending the pictures. First, it was a big package covering all the years Greg had missed. Then, over the years, they’d come in dribs and drabs, but Thomas Windom never forgot. He’s a good man, your stepfather.”
“The best,” Amy assured her. “My mother and I are lucky to have him.” Looking through the last few
pictures in the album, she wondered why Thomas hadn’t sent the engagement picture of her and Jeff.
“I’m sorry I’ve never met the gentleman. But Greg was very grateful to him. It meant a great deal.” Bernadette sought Amy’s gaze. “I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but these photographs meant the world to him. He held them—and you—close to his heart to the very end. That’s why he left you half the inn—to keep you close.”
Amy couldn’t speak. Her tongue felt like lead; her heart felt even heavier. Bernadette had just told her something she had longed to hear almost all her life. She knew now that her father had really cared, yet this coveted knowledge was painful to absorb.
“Greg kept a copy of the picture of you two together up in our bedroom, along with his parents’ wedding picture. I’ll make sure you get them,” Bernadette said.
Amy didn’t hear. She sat stone still, her fingers gliding gently over the photo album’s leather cover. Her sense of loss was immense.
“Amy, dear? Are you all right?”
She turned to Bernadette, her lips quivering. How could she be all right when her heart had just been smashed into bits as a result of her own fearful pride?
“I turned my back on him,” she finally said, her voice trembling. “Why would he have still cared?”
“You cared about. him all those years he was drifting, didn’t you? Deep down, I mean—even though his leaving hurt you.”
Recalling the many nights she had wished on a star for his return, Amy nodded.
“Well, it worked the other way, too,” continued Bernadette. “Your staying away didn’t change his love for you. He always held out hope. And look, here you are.”
“A little late, wouldn’t you say?” She pounded a fist on her thigh as frustration and anger roiled inside her. “I shouldn’t have kept myself away like that—refusing to see him or even talk to him on the phone. Even after all these years, I never tried.”
“And neither did Greg. Not after that first letter,” Bernadette stated flatly. “You shouldn’t blame yourself because Greg couldn’t swallow his pride and try contacting you again. I begged him not to give up.”