Cherish

by Sherryl Woods

  “You always were so impatient,” she said on a breathless laugh. “Not tomorrow, but soon.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise. But I’ll buy my own ticket, Brandon…when I’m ready.”

  He heard the determined note in her voice and knew she wouldn’t budge. “I won’t argue with you over the ticket,” he said reluctantly. “But if you don’t show up soon, I’ll come after you, Lizzy. I swear I will.”

  That night, like so many others in recent months, Brandon Halloran lay awake staring into the darkness. Unlike those other nights, though, this time he was filled with excitement, rather than loneliness. He felt as if nearly fifty years of his life had vanished in the blink of an eye and he was an impetuous, daring young man again.

  * * *

  There was nothing that eighteen-year-old Brandon Halloran loved more than flying. From the day he’d graduated from high school he’d wanted nothing more than to join the Air Force and do his part in World War II. His parents had been appalled when he’d gone and enlisted rather than pack his bags for the Ivy League college that had accepted him. Now with his training complete and his orders for overseas in his pocket, he had ten days to say goodbye.

  Unfortunately, every time he tried to say the words, his mother burst into tears and left the room. His father, who’d come to the United States as an immigrant from England, understood only that he was in some way responsible for Brandon’s decision. He and his uncles had told Brandon stories about England from the day he was born. Because of those stories, Brandon felt this compelling need to fight in a war that was endangering their homeland.

  Besides, he looked damned good in his uniform. Everyone knew that soldiers and fly-boys had their pick of women caught up in the drama of sending young men off to war. He didn’t delude himself that what he was doing was part idealism and part ego. He liked the image of himself as a hero, liked even more the idea of flirting with danger.

  “I’d rather have my son alive,” his mother said when Brandon tried one last time to explain. She slammed a plate onto the kitchen counter with such force it shattered. Then came the tears and she hurried away, refusing to meet his distraught gaze.

  His father came in just then. “You’ve upset your mother again, haven’t you?”

  “Dad, I don’t know what else I can say to her.”

  “She’s afraid for you.”

  “I’m good, Dad. I’ll come out of this okay.”

  In a rare display of emotion, his father gripped his hand. “I hope so, boy. For all our sakes. She’ll never forgive me if you don’t.”

  “You do understand why I need to go, though, don’t you?”

  His father nodded. “If I were a younger man, I’d be going with you.”

  It had been more of a blessing than Brandon had expected. “I think I’ll hitch a ride up the coast with a friend of mine for a couple of days. Maybe that’ll give Mom some time to adjust.”

  “I think that would be best. Make the most of these days, son. Once you ship out, it’s hard telling when you’ll have another chance to relax.”

  Jack Brice picked him up a few hours later and they headed north. Jack’s family had a place overlooking the ocean on the coast of Maine. Brandon had agreed to come along as much to cushion the blow when Jack told his family about his overseas orders as he had to relax.

  When Jack broke the news the following day at lunch, his parents and sisters were every bit as stunned and dismayed as Brandon’s family had been. After a while Brandon left them alone and went for a walk along the cliff overlooking the sea.

  Even in summer there was always a stiff, chilly breeze blowing in hard from the north along there, but the sun beat down to counteract the cold. With his hands jammed in his pockets, he walked for the better part of an hour, thinking about the war taking place directly across the ocean that was splashing against the rocky coastline below.

  He thought of the way the planes responded to his touch, the power he felt sitting at the controls defying gravity. And he thought of the reality of combat which up to now held no meaning for him. His mother, his father, the Brices, they were all right to be afraid. Hell, he’d be scared to death, too, if he allowed himself to ponder all the things that could go wrong on a mission. Fortunately he’d been blessed with an abundance of optimism. Hallorans made their own luck, and he intended to grab quite a handful.

  Brandon was thinking about luck when he first saw the streak of white flashing past, a woman’s bare feet kicking back, her hair streaming. The sunlight caught in the hair and turned it into fiery ribbons. He’d watched her run for no more than a heartbeat before the same compelling sense of fate that had drawn him to enlist sent him racing after her.

  With his long, loping strides he could have caught up with her in no time, but he held back, enjoying the sight of her wide-flung arms, her bare legs, the way the white cotton dress clung to her curves.

  He was so surprised when she suddenly whirled around and stopped stock-still that he almost ran into her. He drew up just in time to catch the bright spark of curiosity in her eyes, the faint sound of laughter on her lips. The run had pushed color into her cheeks and had her bosom rising and falling in a way that was all too provocative despite the demure style of the dress. Brandon felt his breath go still as awareness slammed through him.

  Hands on hips, an arrogant tilt to her chin, she demanded, “Who are you?”

  “Brandon Halloran.”

  “You don’t live around here.”

  He grinned at her certainty. “I suppose you know everyone?”

  “Every handsome man, at any rate,” she said boldly.

  Brandon had a hunch her daring tone was one she never would have used under ordinary circumstances. She looked as if she were trying it out for the first time, a little hesitant, a little defiant.

  “Who are you?”

  “Elizabeth Forsythe, which you would have known if you lived around here,” she said smugly.

  “I suspect you have a reputation with all the men for being outrageous.”

  She grinned in obvious delight at that. “Why, of course.”

  “How old are you, outrageous Lizzy?”

  “No one calls me Lizzy.”

  “I do,” he said matter-of-factly, enjoying the notion of standing out in her memory. “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen,” she said. “And a half.”

  “That half certainly is important,” he said solemnly, all the while thanking all the gods in heaven for making her old enough for him to court.

  She regarded him intently. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you?”

  “No more than you’re teasing me.”

  She turned away from him then and started walking. He fell into step beside her. “Tell me all about yourself, Lizzy Forsythe.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have a feeling we are going to be very important to each other and I want to know everything about you.”

  She glanced up at him with a look that was both shy and impish. “Now who’s being outrageous?”

  “We’ll see about that,” he said softly, wishing he dared to tangle his fingers in the silken threads of her hair, wishing he could see if her skin was nearly as soft as it looked.

  “How long will you be here?”

  “A week,” he said. “Then I’m going to England.”

  “To fight?” she asked with a note of excitement threading unmistakably through her voice.

  “Yes. Do you think a week is long enough for me to make you fall in love with me?”

  She shook her head. “Not nearly long enough.”

  Brandon wondered how she could say that with such certainty, when he felt as if he’d been struck by lightning. There was no sense to the way he was feeling, no logic at all, just the gut-deep conviction that he’d finally met the woman with whom he would share the rest of his life.

  He saw the strength in her and sensed that Elizabeth Forsythe could meet arrogance with confidence, passion with bold
ness. He knew intuitively that she was the sort of woman who could meet a man on his own terms. Making her fall in love with him might not be easy, but that would be more than half the fun of it.

  Lying awake in the middle of the night nearly a half century later, Brandon sighed as he thought back to that time so long ago. How naive he’d been. And yet nothing that had happened in all the years since had changed the emotions that had filled his heart that day.

  Brandon wondered if he would still feel that same sweet certainty when he saw Lizzy again. Maybe he was an old fool for wanting to tempt fate a second time, but he could hardly wait.

  Chapter Three

  Brandon waited impatiently for Lizzy to make good on her promise. There was a new spring in his step. He was actually humming an old tune—that Glenn Miller classic—in the office as he began planning in earnest for the retirement that had terrified him only a few weeks before. Kevin was back at work, his marriage on solid ground at last. Brandon finally felt he could leave Halloran Industries with his mind at ease. More importantly, he had something to look forward to.

  Jason and Kevin clearly didn’t know what to make of the change in Brandon’s mood or the flurry of activity that accompanied putting his retirement plans into action. He caught their bemused expressions, the shake of their heads, more than once. It amused the hell out of him to keep them in the dark.

  They probably thought he was getting senile—unless they’d added up the meaning of all those florist bills as cleverly as Dana had. Knowing Kevin, though, he’d probably only worried that there had been no line item in the corporate budget to justify the expense. Sooner or later he would grumble at his father for mixing his personal spending with the legitimate charges for Halloran Industries.

  It was two long weeks before Lizzy’s call finally came—enough time to plan, enough time to worry that she’d changed her mind, enough time to grow impatient.

  When Brandon’s housekeeper finally announced that a Mrs. Newton was on the phone, he was pacing the library like a caged lion, debating whether he ought to call her himself and put an end to this interminable waiting. Delighted he wouldn’t have to make that decision, he grabbed the receiver before Mrs. Farns-worth had even left the room.

  “Lizzy?”

  “I’m here,” she announced without preliminaries.

  “Where?”

  She named a hotel where they had once shared an intimate dinner. He wondered if she’d chosen it deliberately or merely because it was the only one she could recall when making her reservation. It pleased him to believe the former, rather than the latter, so he didn’t ask.

  “Alone?” he inquired with surprising hesitancy for a man who’d once been a daredevil fighter pilot and after that had commanded a large corporation and hundreds of employees for nearly fifty years.

  Her sudden laughter seemed to float in the air between them. “You never did like to share, did you, Brandon?”

  He knew she’d only meant to tease, but he answered the question seriously. “No, Lizzy, I never did. Not where you were concerned, anyway. You still haven’t answered my question. Are you here alone?’

  He feared more than he cared to admit that she would have packed up one of her daughters, maybe even the grandkids and brought them along as chaperons.

  “Yes,” she said, sounding satisfied that she’d taunted him into revealing a tiny hint of insecurity, “I’m alone.”

  “Then you’ll come to the house for dinner,” he said decisively. “I’ll send a car at once. Can you be ready in ten minutes?”

  Again she laughed, and he was transported back half a century to a time when life had been filled with possibilities and even minutes weren’t to be squandered.

  “Make it thirty minutes and I’ll be waiting,” she promised as she had then.

  This time, Brandon thought, nothing was going to stand in their way.

  * * *

  Elizabeth stood in her hotel room for several minutes after hanging up the phone. It was just like Brandon to start making plans without giving her a second to think over her answer. Only just now had she realized how much she had missed that quick decisiveness, that rush of enthusiasm that spoke volumes about his feelings even when he couldn’t say the words. A woman would always know where she stood with a man like Brandon.

  If he’d had his way nearly fifty years ago, they’d have been married a week after they met. Truth be told, she’d wanted that as much as he had, but she’d been reared as a proper young lady and proper young ladies back then hadn’t gone rushing off to get married on a whim, not when they’d barely turned seventeen and when the man was very nearly a stranger.

  Brandon had coaxed. He’d wooed her with every bit of inventiveness at his command. He’d wanted to ask her father for her hand. She had believed in his love, but she was too cautious by far to give in, even to a handsome airman about to go off to war.

  Even if she had been willing, her parents would have come between them. They had dreams for their only daughter and those dreams didn’t include an impetuous marriage to a man heading straight into harm’s way.

  Nothing had stood in the way of her giving him her love, though. Right or wrong, Elizabeth had not wanted that regret weighing on her forever. There had been time enough later to consider that single, glorious night in his arms and all its implications in an era when nice girls definitely didn’t go to bed with young men before marriage.

  And she had paid for that night. Oh, how she had paid, but she hadn’t been able to resent him for turning her into what her staid parents had called soiled goods. How quaint and unimportant that sounded in this day and age. At the time, though, it had seemed a calamity.

  As she touched a bit of blusher to her cheeks and wondered what he would think when he saw her after all these years, she recalled the way he’d looked at her when she’d turned down his marriage proposal.

  “You’re saying no?” he’d said, his stunned expression reflecting the bemusement of a young man already used to getting his own way in everything that mattered. He’d counted on a splashy diamond ring to persuade her, but she’d refused to allow him to slip it on her finger. She was desperately afraid of being tempted to change her mind. It was difficult enough not to give in to the lure of an impulsive elopement.

  “I’m saying no…for now,” she’d told him gently, but firmly. “Our time will come when you’re home again. I promise I’ll wear the locket you gave me, every single day, and I’ll be waiting.”

  She had meant it with all her heart.

  But their time hadn’t come. Brandon had gone off to England to fly daring missions that had terrified her more with each descriptive letter he sent. Those letters had reminded her how brave he was. Though he had thought her bold, she was weaker by far than he’d imagined. It would never have worked between them. Or so she tried to tell herself as the daily letters had slowly trickled down to one a week or less.

  A few months later her family had left Maine and there had been no choice for Elizabeth but to go with them. They had made that clear, just as they had their feelings about Brandon. Brandon’s letters had stopped altogether then. She’d been devastated, but not terribly surprised. Her parents told her over and over that he’d never loved her at all. She’d guessed he’d found someone else overseas, someone all too willing to make a commitment to a man with his money and charm and daring. Envisioning him with a war bride from England had hurt her more than she’d ever let on to anyone.

  Resigned to never seeing him again, she had finally taken off the locket and relegated it to a box with other treasures. She made a safe, secure life for herself in California. She’d married and taught school. Widowed now, she had two beautiful daughters and three energetic grandchildren, two of whom were already older than she had been when she and Brandon had met.

  Just this week it had been Ellen, her oldest daughter, who’d found the gold locket with Brandon’s picture in it sitting in a crystal bowl on the coffee table. Elizabeth had placed it there after
looking at the picture inside time and again, trying to make up her mind about the folly of taking this trip.

  “I’ve never seen this before,” Ellen said as the fragile gold chain sifted through her fingers. The heart-shaped locket had rested in her palm.

  Elizabeth reached for it, flustered and uncertain, but she hadn’t been able to prevent Ellen from looking inside.

  Her daughter had studied the tiny photograph for several minutes before looking up and saying quietly, “He’s very handsome. Who is he? It’s not Father.”

  “No,” Elizabeth admitted. “It’s someone I knew long ago, before I met your father.”

  Ellen studied her face for what seemed an eternity, then said with obvious amazement, “You loved him very much, didn’t you?”

  Elizabeth shrugged nonchalantly, but her pulse scrambled. “I thought I did, but I was very young.”

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not really sure. He went off to war and we lost touch.” It was the simplest explanation she could think of for something that had seemed so terribly complicated at the time. She managed to keep any hint of bitterness out of her voice.

  “Were you engaged?”

  “Not officially, though he wanted very much to marry me before he left. I turned him down.”

  “But why, if you loved him?”

  Elizabeth sighed. “You can’t imagine how many times I asked myself that same question. In the end, though, it seems I made the right decision.”

  “Why do you have this out now?”

  “I heard from him a few weeks ago.”

  Ellen’s eyes lit up at once, clearly fascinated. “Really? He found you after all this time?”

  “Yes,” she said. Then because she was still amazed by it, she added, “He hired a detective of all things.”

  “Oh, Mother, that’s so romantic.”

  Romantic. Yes, that definitely summed up Brandon. Romantic and, as it had turned out, irresponsible. Elizabeth took the locket from her daughter’s hand and ran her fingers over the simple design engraved on the face of the heart. It felt warm from Ellen’s touch.