The Return of Caine O'Halloran: Hard Choices

by JoAnn Ross

  “How about your wife?’

  “Bull’s-eye.” Sighing, Caine reluctantly released her. “I hate it when you insist on acting like a grown-up.”

  “One of us has to.” Her cheeks were still flushed, her lips swollen, and her eyes were laced with desire. “Perhaps it’d be better if we just stayed away from one another.”

  “In this town?” Caine knew that no matter where they were living, things had gone too far to back away now.

  “You have a point,” Nora conceded reluctantly. “I suppose I’ll be seeing you next Friday night.”

  Midsummer’s Eve was an annual festival dating back to the days of Swedish pagan worship, a celebration of the summer solstice. Years ago someone had gotten the idea to add a contest of lumbering skills to the festivities, which resulted in loggers coming from all over the country to try to win the purse that had grown larger each year. Neither Caine nor Nora had attended since the night Dylan had been conceived.

  “I suppose. If I’m in town.”

  “Oh. Are you taking another charter for Maggie?” she asked with more casualness than she was feeling.

  “No.” He’d been trying to think of a way to break the news. “I got a call from the Tigers.”

  “Oh? I hadn’t realized you’d recovered well enough to pitch again.”

  Caine watched her shutting up, like a wildflower closing its petals prior to a storm. “I haven’t. They’re about to fire their pitching coach and I’m on the short list to be his replacement.”

  “I see.” She did, all too well. “Does that mean you’ve given up the idea of playing again?”

  “For the time being.” He flexed his fingers. “Hell, there’s no point in trying to fool myself any longer, Nora. I’ve still got the moves, but I’ve lost the feeling necessary for absolute control.”

  “Well, then, I certainly wish you luck with this new offer.”

  The intimacy between them was gone, replaced by that cold formality Caine had always hated. Only the knowledge that Nora was iciest when she was experiencing the greatest inner turmoil kept him from pushing.

  “Thanks. These days I need all the luck I can get.”

  He decided to leave before they got into an argument regarding what she’d always considered his self-centered career choices. “You don’t have to see me out.” He bent his head, stealing another quick kiss. “I know the way.”

  Frustrated by the way he could still cause such havoc to her emotional equilibrium, Nora curved her fingers around the handle of the surgical scissors. She was unreasonably tempted to throw them at his cocky, sun-streaked head.

  Instead, she deliberately put them down on the table, closed her eyes and struggled for calm—something that was difficult to achieve when she heard Caine’s deep voice, followed by an all-too-familiar rumbling chuckle coming from the foyer.

  If she was upset by the way Caine had left her shaken—and, dammit, wanting—Nora was appalled at the surge of dark jealousy caused by the sound of Kirstin’s appreciative, answering laugh.

  Chapter 11

  As if ancient pagan gods had benevolently conspired with Mother Nature, Midsummer Eve was warm and clear. A full moon hung like a silver dollar in the sky, bathing the town in a light that was nearly as bright as day, only softer.

  Japanese lanterns had been strung around the square; white lights twinkled in the broad leaves of maple trees planted by some long-ago town council. At one end of the square, men drank beer from a keg and slung horseshoes. The plink of forged iron shoes against the iron stakes joined with the sound of crickets.

  Tables were covered with food: cold fruit soups, a variety of local clams and oysters, pyttipanna—a traditional late-supper hash—and platters of salmon topped with senapssas, a cold mustard-dill sauce.

  On the dessert table, delicate pâlattar—traditional Swedish pancakes topped with lingonberries—shared space with blueberry filled tortes topped with a frothy meringue and mazarintsarta—a raspberry torte topped with lemon icing. At the end of the dessert table was hot punsch, a lethal brandy-and-rum drink. If all that weren’t enough to satiate appetites, people stood in line, paper plates in hand, waiting for one of the flame-broiled Olympic burgers Ingrid Johansson was cooking on an enormous charcoal grill.

  The opposite end of the square had been turned into a modern-day Highland games, where loggers competed to win the coveted purse that this year had grown to five thousand dollars. There was the angry, beelike drone of chain saws, the thwack of an ax landing on target, raucous laughter and wild splashing whenever a hapless logger tumbled off a rolling log into the fishpond.

  On her way across the green, Nora paused to watch the women’s ax-throwing contest.

  “Now that’s a magnificent, if admittedly frightening sight,” a deep voice murmured in her ear. “A beautiful woman swinging a double-headed ax.”

  She turned around, struggled to keep the smile off her face, and failed. “Hi.”

  Caine would have had to be deaf not to hear the uncensored pleasure in her voice. “Hi, yourself.”

  She was wearing something floaty and flowery and very feminine. She smelled like a spring garden. He reached out and fingered a dangling earring crafted from pastel shells. “You look absolutely gorgeous.”

  Color stained her cheeks. “Thank you.”

  The billowy skirt ended well below her knees; until tonight, Caine had never realized exactly how sexy a woman’s calves could be.

  “The town council made a big mistake.” He was looking down at her as if he wanted to grab her by the hair and drag her off to his cave. Nora looked up at him as if she hoped he would.

  “A mistake?” She glanced around at the festival that was an obvious success. “About what?”

  “They should have voted you Queen. Instead of Britta Nelson.”

  Nora followed his gaze to the majstàng—the flower-decked pole that a circle of young girls were currently dancing around. Fifteen-year-old Britta Nelson was wearing her crown, a circlet of fresh flowers, perched atop her silvery blond hair.

  “I brought you something.” Caine pulled a bouquet of wildflowers from behind his back.

  “Oh, they’re lovely.” In spite of her better judgment, Nora buried her nose in the fragrant blooms.

  “There are seven different kinds.”

  The significance of that number did not escape her. Swedish folklore decreed any maiden who placed seven different wildflowers beneath her pillow on Midsummer Eve would dream of the man she would marry.

  “Really, Caine...”

  When she would have backed away, he captured her hand and lifted it to his lips. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid you’ll dream about me?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’ve been dreaming about you.” Smiling, he began to kiss her fingers. “Every night. Want to hear a few of the more interesting ones?”

  When his lips moved to the soft skin at the center of her palm, although Nora the doctor knew it was impossible, Nora the woman could have sworn that every muscle in her body began to melt. Knowing that nothing in Tribulation went unnoticed, she yanked her hand free.

  “No.” She put her hands behind her back to keep them out of Caine’s range. Unfortunately, such defensive behavior made it impossible to push him away when he proceeded to back her up against the trunk of the maple tree behind her. “I don’t.”

  “Too bad.” He put his hands on either side of her head, effectively holding her hostage. “My favorite is the one where we’re flying over the ocean in Maggie’s Learjet—”

  “Maggie doesn’t have a Learjet—”

  “It’s a dream,” Caine argued easily. “Anyway, we’re over the ocean, and all we can see for miles in all directions, is the blue-green of the sea and the blue of the sky. It’s as if we’re the only two people in the worl
d.

  “Just you and me and the wild blue yonder. And here’s where the good part begins: I put the plane on autopilot, and—”

  There was the sound of a throat clearing behind them.

  “Ah, excuse me, Caine. Hi, Nora,” Joe Bob Carroll said apologetically. “Sorry to interrupt. But your grandpappy’s lookin’ for the both of you, Caine. Since he looked a little ragged around the edges, I told him to wait over by the horseshoe pits while I went and found you.”

  Caine dropped his hands to his sides. He gave Nora a worried look. “Devlin stayed home with Maggie tonight. If he left her to come here...”

  Nora wanted to cover his grimly set lips with her own, to press kisses all over that dark, tortured face. She longed to tell him that there was no need to worry, that his grandmother would live to be a hundred.

  In the end, she merely lifted a palm to his cheek.

  “We’d better go see what he wants,” she said in the quiet, reassuring tone she’d adopted during her years of medical practice.

  Nora took her ex-husband’s hand in hers and led him, atypically meek as a lamb, across the crowded green, through the throng of merrymakers, toward Devlin O’Halloran.

  * * *

  When they reached the house, Ellen and Mike O’Halloran were waiting. Mike, Caine’s father, had always been a taciturn man, more comfortable with his lures and lines than with people. A crisis did not change his nature.

  After murmuring a vague, inarticulate greeting to Nora, he gave her an awkward hug. Although he might not be as talkative as either Devlin or Caine, the painful prospect of losing his mother had made his dark eyes moist.

  Ellen O’Halloran’s face, still remarkably unlined for a woman nearing sixty, was tanned to a deep hazelnut color from the lifestyle change that now had her spending so much of her time outdoors. Her short hair was the color of autumn leaves, laced with random streaks of sun-lightened auburn and silver.

  As she embraced her former mother-in-law, Nora experienced a moment’s confusion over whether she was here in her role as doctor or family.

  As a doctor, although she continually fought against it, death had become a fellow traveler, at times welcome, most often not. As a family member—at the moment, her divorce from Caine seemed inconsequential—Nora shared everyone’s feelings of helplessness and sorrow.

  The hospice nurse came out of the bedroom and drew Nora aside. “I informed Maggie’s family that she won’t last the night,” she murmured. “But, of course, I’ve been wrong before.”

  Nora knew only too well the futility of second-guessing death. “I’d better examine her.”

  Maggie was asleep when Nora entered the bedroom. She was wearing an old-fashioned ivory cotton gown with long sleeves trimmed with hand-tatted lace. Her thinning red hair was spread across the embroidered pillow like strands of silver touched by a setting sun. Her face, in repose, was calm.

  Nora reached down and lifted a frail wrist. Her pulse was thin and thready. Nora had just lowered the elderly woman’s hand to the sheet again when Maggie’s blue eyes popped open.

  “I figured that was you,” she said. “Caine always said you smelled like wildflowers after a spring rain.” Maggie laced their fingers together. “He’s right.”

  “Speaking of Caine,” Nora said, “he’s waiting to see you.”

  “I know. I’ve already said my goodbyes to Michael and Ellen and was just hangin’ on until you and Caine got here.” Her eyes fluttered shut. Nora slid her thumb to Maggie’s wrist and was relieved to find her pulse un-changed. A few moments later, Maggie’s eyes opened again. “So how was the festival?”

  “Nice.” Nora knew Maggie wanted particulars so she filled her in on the sawdust competition, the dancing, the Japanese lanterns, and the smorgasbord.

  “Did Eva Magnuson bring her apple torte?”

  “Of course.”

  “Her apples are never tart enough,” Maggie complained. “And her crust is like concrete. But she’s been makin’ the damn thing forever, so no one has the heart to tell her.

  “I remember Midsummer Eve during Vietnam” Maggie mused. “We couldn’t have the lanterns because of the blackouts. Never knew when an enemy submarine was going to come steaming up the strait to the shipyards.”

  She closed her eyes again. The corners of her mouth twitched upward. “A lot of smooching went on in the shadows behind those old maples, let me tell you. Especially with all the boys shippin’ out. Nothin’ like a war to steam up a romance.”

  The smile faded. “Michael’s hurtin’ bad,” Maggie continued. “Not that he’d ever admit it. If I lived another eighty-two years, I’d probably never figure out how a magpie like me could’ve given birth to such a closemouthed boy.

  “But he’s got Ellen, so I’m not worried about him. Of course, poor Caine’s probably gonna carry on something awful because he couldn’t keep his grandmother alive.”

  She sighed, pressed a hand against her failing heart and took a ragged breath. “Caine always did take too much on his own shoulders. But it’s the boy’s nature, so what can you do?”

  Maggie’s lashes drifted down again, but she didn’t fall asleep. “Caine’s been telling me about this teammate of his. Some Buddhist fella. They believe in reincarnation.”

  “The Detroit shortstop,” Nora remembered.

  “I’ve been thinking about that a lot, lately,” Maggie admitted. “I kinda like the idea of comin’ back again. Maybe this time as an astronaut.”

  “The first woman to pilot a spaceship to Mars,” Nora suggested with a smile.

  Maggie smiled, as well. “I’d like that. Devlin wouldn’t. He gets airsick.” She chuckled again. “Imagine, a man who’s spent most of his life on the water getting airsick. I never have been able to figure that one out.”

  She drifted off again. Nora had just about decided that it was time to bring the family in when Maggie opened her eyes, fixed her with her bright blue gaze and said, “If there does turn out to be a heaven, I’ll tell Dylan his mama says hello.”

  Nora had to swallow past the lump in her throat. “Thank you.”

  “If we do get to come back again, I reckon your paths will cross one of these days and you can tell him yourself,” Maggie decided.

  Tears were burning at the backs of her lids. Nora could only nod.

  “You’d better send Caine in now, Nora. After you give me a kiss.”

  Nora bent her head and brushed her lips against the older woman’s cheek. Her skin was as thin and dry as old parchment.

  “I love you, Maggie.” All right, perhaps it wasn’t the most professional thing to say, but it was the truth.

  “And I love you, girl.” It took an obvious effort, but Maggie managed to lift her hand from the sheet to pat Nora’s cheek. “Take good care of my grandson,” she whispered. “I know he can be a bit of a hotshot from time to time, Nora, but he’s a good boy. Deep down.”

  “I know.” That, too, was the truth.

  It was with a heavy heart that Nora went to the door and gestured toward Caine. When he entered the bedroom, she brushed her fingers against his rigid jaw, then left him alone with his grandmother.

  He’d been watching Maggie’s decline for weeks, but in the back of his mind, Caine had refused to accept the fact that his grandmother was dying. Even now, looking at her ivory complexion and her frail frame, he couldn’t face the sad truth.

  “You’re missing the dancing.”

  “I know. And that really gets my goat. Your pappy’s a good dancer.” A faint reminiscent light flickered in Maggie’s eyes.

  “The first time we danced together was on Midsummer Eve. I’d landed in town as part of a five-girl flying exhibition team. The town council hired us thinkin’ we might bring some tourists in from the cities. Your pappy was mayor. It was his idea.”

 
Caine sat down in the straight-backed chair beside the bed. “Did you? Bring in more tourists?”

  Maggie shrugged her frail shoulders. “Don’t remember. Only thing I recollect about that night is dancin’ the rumba with Devlin. After that, everything kinda passed in a blur. The next day, when the sun came up, the rest of the girls moved on.”

  “But you stayed.” It was one of Caine’s favorite

  stories.

  “And never regretted a single day. What your pappy and I had was special. We both knew that right off the bat.” Maggie’s eyes closed, but her hand reached across the sheets to pat his.

  “It’s taken you and Nora a little longer, but you’ll get there. Eventually. Like that Buddhist friend of yours says, a man can’t escape his Karma.... Would you do me a favor?”

  “You’ve got it,” Caine said without hesitation.

  “Would you help me brush my hair?”

  She was as light as a feather; Caine lifted her with ease and propped her up against the plump goose-down pillows. Retrieving a silver-handled hairbrush, he began stroking the brush over her scalp, smoothing out the once-fiery strands.

  “Mmm,” Maggie murmured. “That feels good.” Just when Caine thought she’d fallen asleep, Maggie said, “Love’s a powerful thing, Caine. Even more powerful than fate. And you and Nora have got both goin’ for you.”

  He’d come to that same realization himself. Now all he had to do was convince Nora. “I know, Gram. And that’s why you have to stay well enough to stick around for the wedding.”

  “There’s nothin’ I’d like better. But don’t you worry, boy, I’ll be there in spirit.” Caine watched her struggle to lift her lids. “How do I look?”

  “Beautiful.” On impulse, he spritzed her with the lilac cologne she’d always worn. “You smell pretty good, too. If you weren’t my grandmother, I’d probably have to give pappy a run for his money.”

  She dimpled at that, looking remarkably, for one fleeting second, like a girl of sixteen. “You and Devlin,” she murmured. “Two peas in a pod. Both of you must’ve kissed the blarney stone in some past life.”