The Edge of Forever

by Bretton, Barbara

  “Ahem!” Meg cleared her throat loudly. “Better be careful, doctor. We wouldn’t want you to tarnish your image reading stuff like that.”

  Elysse fanned herself with the book. “It must be all that Hawaiian sunshine. I’m surprised they had time to become a state.”

  ‘And here I thought you’d heard it all.”

  Elysse was quiet as she flipped slowly through the book, stopping here and there to linger on certain passages. “It seems Ms. Moreau has discovered a few variations they missed in The Joy of Sex.” She grinned at Meg. “No wonder you’re buying up all of the Angelique Moreaus in the store.”

  “Angelique Moreau is really Joseph Alessio.”

  Elysse stared at her with a shocked expression. “As in Joseph Alessio who owns the other half of Lakeland House?”

  “One and the same.”

  Elysse flipped open her copy of Against All Odds once more and read the author’s bio on the inside back cover. “’Angelique Moreau has lived in Spain, a South Pacific island, and even once spent a year in Alaska. Her varied experiences have brought a richness and sensuality to her novels that delight her devoted readers.’” She checked the inside cover and the copyright page. “Are you sure? I don’t see his name anywhere.”

  “That’s part of the illusion,” Meg explained. “Female authors outsell male authors in this genre.”

  Elysse was carefully watching Meg’s face. “And what does this man look like”? Thinning grey hair and a weak chin?”

  Meg pointed toward the dark-haired man on the cover of the book.

  Elysse’s jaw dropped for the second time. “You’re kidding!” She paused for a second. “You have to be.”

  “He’s a dead ringer for this guy.”

  Elysse seemed mesmerized by the cover. “He really looks like that?”

  “He really does.”

  “And you’ll be alone with him for a month in the woods?”

  A delicious shiver ran up Meg’s spine, and she nodded, not trusting her voice. Elysse scooped up their packages and began nudging Meg toward the cashier.

  “What’s the rush?” Meg pulled her AmEx card out one last time.

  “Remember that outrageous black dress you passed up?”

  Meg nodded.

  “We’re going back to Brennan’s and getting it for you.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little too—“ Meg searched for the word—“risque for rural New Hampshire?”

  Elysse took a final glance at the piratical rogue on the cover and sighed. “Somehow I have the feeling it’s going to be just right.”

  #

  Angelique Moreau needed a shave.

  Three days had passed since he met Renee at the coffee shop and three days had passed since he’d seen a razor, a shower, a comb, or his bed. His desk was littered with half-empty coffee cups, open reference books, closed notepads and enough crumpled sheets of paper to constitute a fire hazard.

  He’d written the outline on six napkins at the coffee shop, handed it off to Renee, then broke speed limits to get home before the muse abandoned him. By the time he hit his driveway, the fantasy world of Meg and her band of Renaissance pirates was more real than his own home.

  Too bad the fictional Margarita and the very real Meg had somehow merged and neither one of them was about to be pushed around by Angelique Moreau.

  And that was where he was at the moment. He’d tried meditation, free association, right-brain exercises, and left-brain logic, and nothing had worked. So he headed down the hall to the weight room he’d installed overlooking the pool, where he yanked on a pair of worn boxing gloves and threw a quick left-right into the air. Maybe slamming his fists into the leather bag would somehow break the block and let him write.

  #

  Eryk’s long, sensitive fingers drew a line of fire across her shoulders and down the lush valley between her breasts. Isobel feared she would dissolve in heat if she didn’t feel him pressed against her soon. With a swift, surprising movement, she slipped off the straps of her ivory lace chemise and stepped out of the confines of her petticoat. He pulled a tortoiseshell pin from her hair, and the coppery gold tresses cascaded down her back, falling almost to her waist. Then Isobel undid the laces of the chemise and stood before him, naked and proud.

  They fell together on the bed. For the rest of her life she would remember the feel of the cool silk bedspread on the fiery skin of her back as he slowly lowered his long, well-muscled body onto hers. She lifted her arms and—

  It was the sound of a knock at her side door that forced Meg from the nineteenth century and back to reality. For five hours she had been immersed in the saga of Isobel Carrington and her lover Eryk Depardieu. And for five hours she’d found herself thinking not as Meg Lindstrom but as Isobel Carrington, feeling what she felt, and, most of all, falling deeply in love with the magnetic Eryk, who now was dangeorusly linked with the author.

  Again the quick tap at the door. “Hurry up, Lindstrom!” Elysse called. “The soup’s getting cold.”

  Meg put the book down and forced the image of herself and Joe Alessio in a highly compromising position from her mind. She hid the paperback book beneath a black-and-grey sofa cushion and hurried to the side door.

  “It’s only a book,” she repeated under her breath. “It’s only a book” But the thought of that gloriously graphic cover sent her fantasies spiraling shamelessly toward heights of pleasure she’d never believed possible.

  “What took you so long?” Elysse, shivering in a thin top and slacks, hurried into the kitchen carrying a bright red covered pot. “Did I wake you up?”

  “I was reading.”

  Elysse took a clean bowl from the cabinet over the sink and ladled some steaming soup into it. “When you missed dinner tonight, I figured you were either catching up on your sleep or packing.” She grinned and motioned for Meg to sit down at her own kitchen table. “I should’ve known better.”

  “How long have you known me? I always save my packing for the last minute.”

  “This is the last minute and don’t play dumb. You know what I’m talking about.” She sat down opposite Meg. “You’re reading Against All Odds.”

  Meg took a spoonful of soup, then grinned. “You too?”

  Elysse sighed. “That man knows more about the female psyche than he has a right to. He must’ve done it with mirrors.” She grinned. “Literally.”

  “The way he described Isobel’s feelings after making love with Eryk for the first time unnerved the hell out of me.” Meg blushed at the thought of the erotically charged passage. “You can’t do that with mirrors. That’s talent.”

  “No one understands a woman’s thought processes better than another woman,” Elysse mused, “but this Joe Alessio was right on target.” She hesitated a moment. “Do you think he’s gay?”

  Meg almost choked on her soup. “Absolutely not!”

  Elysse focused her therapist eyes on Meg. “Are you sure? Gay men often have an innate understanding of women that—“

  Meg raised her hand to stop her friend. “Sorry, doctor, but your analysis is way off base, not to mention alarmingly stereotypical. He’s hetero. Trust me on that.”

  Elysse’s eyebrows darted skyward. “Firsthand knowledge?”

  She thought of the look in Joe’s eyes as he traced the outline of her mouth on the coffee cup, thought of the feel of his hand in hers, the rugged male strength obvious in each movement he made. She may not have firsthand knowledge of his sexuality, but she didn’t need to hear the weather report to know the sun was shining. “Let’s call it an educated guess.”

  Elysse chewed a piece of Italian bread while she watched Meg. “Men like that should be labeled ‘Hazardous to a woman’s health.’ How are we going to maintain our feminine mystique with a Joe Alessio reading our minds? I think your carefully guarded heart is going to be in grave danger, my friend.”

  Meg finished her soup and put the bowl in the sink. “I’ve managed to get through twenty-six years with my
heart intact, Elly. I think I can get through one more month.”

  “I don’t think you’ll get through the first week. I’ve been to Lakeland, too, Meg. The scent of pine, swirling snow, a roaring, crackling fire in the hearth. . . “

  “We’re going up there to work, nothing more. He probably wants to get it over with as much as I do.”

  Elysse was not to be denied. “A healthy, heterosexual man and woman all alone in that magical house. It’s inevitable.”

  Meg was teetering between reckless anticipation and downright annoyance over Elysse’s certainty that she and Joe Alessio would become lovers. “Fifty bucks says Mr. Alessio and I say goodbye as business partners and nothing more.”

  Elysse’s blue eyes danced in a way that made Meg want to hit her on the head with the rest of the Italian bread. “Fifty bucks says you and Angelique Moreau don’t say goodbye at all.”

  They shook hands and Meg walked her friend to the back door. “I’ll be very happy to prove you wrong, Elly. Sometimes you’re too smug for your own good.”

  Elysse, quite smug indeed, chuckled. “Take a long look at pages 320 through 343, then tell me I’m wrong.”

  Meg watched as Elysse’s small form dashed up the pathway to the main house, then slammed her door and raced back to the living room, where she’d stashed the romance novel.

  Page 318, 319—there it was, page 320. She started to read.

  And five minutes later Meg Lindstrom had the feeling she’d be out fifty dollars before the month was over.

  #

  Twelve hours later Meg was seated in Patrick McCallum’s office, signing the last of the necessary papers relating to joint ownership of Lakeland House.

  “And that, dear Margarita, is everything.” The lawyer leaned back in his swivel chair, his ready smile lighting up his basset-hound face. “Water, electricity, cleaning service. Everything has been taken care of by the foundation.” He put his large feet up on top of his oak desk “Would there be something I’m forgetting?”

  Joe, Meg thought. Where is he? “Only one thing,” she said instead. “The key.”

  McCallum laughed and pulled a brass ring from his pocket. “Keys,” he corrected her, shaking the ring so that they jingled merrily. “Anna believe in security.”

  “I can see that. I thought crime hadn’t reached New Hampshire yet.” She leaned over and took the heavy key ring from him. “Should I worry?”

  McCallum made a face. “Lock the doors and forget about it,” he advised, “The isolation that worried Anna, not the crime. She was a city girl, born and bred. She never quite relaxed out here in the country.”

  Meg, a city girl herself, nodded. Miles and miles of emptiness did more to inspire dread in her heart than a subway platform at midnight.

  She stood up. “I guess I’ll be going now.” Why didn’t he say anything about Joe? Alessio’s absence was like the elephant in the room.

  McCallum quickly rose to his feet and came around his desk to escort her to the door. “I’m going to drop in every now and then to make sure things are going well for you.” He rested an arm lightly on her shoulder in a paternal gesture of affection. “And don’t be making yourself a stranger here. Come and see me when you’re in town, Margarita.”

  She smiled at him, waited a beat, then said, “What happened to Joe? Has he changed his mind about working on the history?”

  McCallum clapped the heel of his hand against his forehead and groaned. “I’d be forgetting my head if it wasn’t attached to the rest of my body. Joseph called yesterday. He had a contractual obligation but he’ll be here in the morning.”

  “Is he all right?”

  So Joe had a contractual obligation to meet. Another Angelique Moreau novel, no doubt. She thought about the four novels tucked into her suitcase. Now that she knew he was still coming to Lakeland, she could relax and enjoy the fact that she’d have an extra day to finish her crash course in the works of Joseph Alessio.

  She headed toward the highway, switching on her low beams against the encroaching dusk. Although Joe wrote from a woman’s viewpoint, Meg was certain much more of the real man was exposed in his Angelique Moreau novels than he would care to admit.

  She turned off the main highway and began navigating the narrow, twisting road that led to Lakeland House. The exposure of highly personal emotions was part of what had attracted her to photography. Although she was dealing with concrete objects rather than ones created from whole cloth, the viewpoint belonged solely to the man or woman behind the lens. By tricks of lighting and angle, by choosing to include one element of the whole or block it out, she’d been able to alter reality, glorify the beauty of the beast in man as she saw fit. Even when she had tried to keep her deeper self out of her work, to concern herself only with form and line, it had been impossible to totally obliterate her personal, creative touch.

  Her teachers at college had seen that. Her sister, Kay, had noticed it. Anna, and the Kennedy Center, had rewarded her for it. A world of possibilities had been opening up for her when her sister died and she put her own dreams aside. But the desire to create hadn’t left her. The need to capture reality, to redefine life, had stayed with Meg—the creative urge as strong inside her as the need for food and air.

  Meg rounded a hairpin curve, and instinctively her hand shot across the passenger’s seat to keep her camera equipment from falling to the floor.

  More than Joe Alessio and the delicious danger he represented, it was a different, more seductive danger Meg feared most. Lakeland House. There, surrounded by the dreams of her younger self, it might be difficult to believe that she had chosen the right path and impossible to defend it, even to herself.

  By the time she reached the gates, it was fully dark. A stiff wind blew her coat open as she unlatched the gate then continued to make her way slowly up the rutted driveway.

  On past trips, the lights on either side of the drive had always been on, glowing brightly to guide friends to Anna’s house. The house itself had blazed with lamplight and candle glow and the friendly crackling fire from blazing hearths. Now the house was dark, blank as an empty canvas, its windows shuttered against the night. Thick clouds obscured the moon and stars.

  Meg pulled into the cavernous garage where she grabbed her bags from the back seat then locked the car. Some city-bred habits were hard to break.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” she said out loud as she crackled her way over fallen leaves that obliterated the path to the house. Who would steal her car? Raccoons? Field mice? There were no dangers lurking behind the evergreens, no perils waiting to befall her. She was probably the only human in a five-mile radius.

  Still, you never knew. She turned quickly and glanced around her as she climbed the steps and put down her bags on the porch. Where had she stowed the keys Patrick had given her? They weren’t in her purse. She was sifting through her deep coat pockets when she had the sharp, unmistakable sense that she was being watched.

  There was nobody in sight. The only sounds were the rustling wind and the soft hoot of owls. But the feeling that she was being watched grew stronger. She unlocked the door, then hesitated. Leaving the door open, she went back down the wooden stairs to the edge of the path. The cloud cover shifted, and thin streams of moonlight illuminated the fat rhododendron bushes ten yards or so away.

  She fought down a scream. Two figures crouched in the semidarkness, partially hidden in the bushes. She took the steps like a pole-vaulter, bursting into the foyer then slamming the door behind her.

  So much for solitary country life. After she called the cops, she would find herself a nice safe motel to stay in until Mr. Alessio showed up.

  “I need the police,” she said to the operator.

  “Where are you?” the operator asked in a professionally flat tone of voice.

  “Gorham. No, wait a minute. Just outside. I’m on the north road, a little bit—“

  “Are there any cross streets?” the operator broke in. “Any churches you can identify?”
/>
  “I’m at Lakeland House. Anna Kennedy’s place.”

  “Hold on.”

  Within seconds Meg was speaking to the town police, who assured her they would be there immediately.

  Meg hung up the phone and rested her head against the cool wall as relief flooded her body.

  And then she heard the noise in the hall.

  She spun around and found herself face to face with the tallest, skinniest man she had ever seen. He wore camouflage pants, a neon yellow sweater and a battered fedora and a look of bemusement on his face.

  “You called the cops?” he asked in a lazy voice. A slightly manic grin broke across his craggy face as he adjusted the brim of his fedora. “Now I really wish you hadn’t done that.”

  Chapter Five

  The man took a step into the room. Meg picked up one of the heavy maple captain’s chairs and held it overhead, thanking God and weight training for her strong arms. “Don't come any closer,” she said, riveting her dark eyes to his slightly glazed ones.

  He looked a trifle hurt. “What a thing to say to a fellow artist.”

  The chair lowered a fraction. “Artist?”

  The overhead light made the diamond stud in his right ear sparkle. “Huntington Kendall.” He seemed to think the name should mean something to her. “Huntington Kendall IV.”

  “I don’t care if you’re Henry VIII.” Meg tightened her grip on the chair and tried to ignore her screaming forearm muscles. “Take one more step and I'll put you in a coma.”

  He lowered his long-limbed body to the floor and took up a classic yoga position. “You have quite a temper, Margarita Lindstrom. I had no idea.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  His brown eyes twinkled up at her almost as brightly as the diamond in his ear and she wondered exactly how drunk he was. “Patrick, of course.”

  “Of course,” she muttered. She put the chair down but maintained her grip just in case. “Do you work here?” Maybe he was one of the maintenance crew McCallum had told her about or a New Wave gardener.