Heat Wave

by Jill Marie Landis

  “No. I guess I don’t.”

  “Good.” He assessed her a couple of seconds longer than necessary.

  “What?” She tossed her hair back, raised her chin a notch. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”

  “I’m trying to decide who you remind me of more, your great-grandma or your mom.”

  “You knew them?”

  “Sure. Your dad and I have been best friends since grade school, and your mom, well, we all went to high school together.”

  “So, I guess in a place like this, her being pregnant was probably the talk of the town.” Maybe now she’d find out that Chandler had known about her all along.

  “Ty didn’t know, if that’s what you’re fishing for.”

  He made her blush, but she didn’t back off.

  “Did she leave town first, or did he?”

  “She went to L.A. and he went after her, but she refused to come back. He never knew about you, Sunny. Don’t hold anything against him.”

  Hearing it again satisfied her, though it didn’t salve the hurt. Chandler was turning out to be about as straight as a guy could get.

  R.J. didn’t comment on her shorts—Chandler had hinted that maybe they were too short for her to wear to work and maybe she had on a little too much makeup. He’d even suggested she ask Kat to give her makeup tips. As if.

  R.J. gave her the once-over and obviously seemed to think she looked okay, because he didn’t object. He had requested before she start that she buy some flat-soled tennis shoes to wear on deck, which she had done. Unlike Earl, R.J. treated her like an adult. She was both surprised and grateful.

  “So, do you think Chandler is going to stick around or do you think he’ll go back to Alaska?” She figured as long as R.J. was willing to talk, she’d ask him everything she hadn’t felt comfortable asking Chandler yet.

  R.J. shrugged as he walked around checking all the lines.

  “He doesn’t plan on going back unless the guy who bought his fishing camp goes belly-up.”

  “Did he make a lot of money?”

  R.J. paused and looked at her. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  She shrugged. “I think he thinks of me as a kid.”

  “You are a kid.”

  That pissed her off, but he was smiling when he said it, so she let it go.

  “He seems like a pretty squared-away guy.” She leaned against the deck rail, shook out her hair. The breeze was blowing the heck out of it.

  “Salt of the earth.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What you see with Ty Chandler is what you get.”

  As she watched him walk over to the ladder to help the first of the paying guests aboard, she found herself thinking that R.J. was a good-looking man. There was an edge to him and she liked the twinkle in his eye.

  She closed her eyes and pictured Dodge’s face, tried to remember the way things had been between them.

  By the time the Stargazer reached open water, she’d grown used to the way the sailboat crested the swells and then dipped beneath the power of the wind. Kissed by sea spray, she fell instantly in love with sailing.

  As they ventured up the coast toward Twilight, Ron introduced Robin Davis as his first mate and Sunny as the “rest of the crew,” which brought a round of laughter from the tourists.

  She blushed when he said, “Well, folks, tonight is Sunny’s maiden voyage. But don’t worry, if she causes an accident, there are ample life jackets aboard.”

  Everyone laughed, and R.J. waited until they were listening again before he added, “The bad news is that the life jackets are bright orange and I recently read somewhere that sharks are attracted to orange.”

  As they sailed past Ty’s cottage on the point, R.J. drew everyone’s attention again.

  “Sunny’s going to be a natural sailor.” He said it with a confidence she was just beginning to feel. “She comes from a long line of seafarers who settled the town of Twilight.”

  She stared at Chandler’s house and listened as R.J. explained how it had been built by her great-great-great-great-grandfather, not of adobe, as was the style back then, but of wood, to resemble the homes back East.

  Though the air off the water was cool and comfortable, she experienced a warm rush of pride when R.J. outlined the role the Chandlers played in establishing Twilight Cove.

  She’d never had any notion of how deep her family ties ran. Her mother never spoke of her grandmothers or grandfathers, aunts or uncles or cousins, on either side.

  Now here she was, out on the ocean, looking up at a house built by a Chandler 150 years ago, and the house was still standing. Someone whose blood flowed in her veins had a vision for a whole town.

  Maybe that’s why she was still standing, why she hadn’t given up yet. She’d inherited DNA from someone who had made a real mark in the world.

  And if Ty Chandler hadn’t found her, she’d have never known about her history at all—hers and Alice’s.

  As she stood there in awe of the house, first mate Robin tapped her on the shoulder and whispered that it was time to pass around the appetizer tray. All she had to do was smile and keep a tight hold on the cocktail napkins so they wouldn’t blow away. The guests were to help themselves.

  Unfortunately there was a bit more to it. The guests wanted to chat now that R.J. had built her up as somewhat of a town celebrity. She found herself having to be sociable and interact with strangers, and it wasn’t as hard as she would have thought.

  After a few minutes, she settled into it, imagining how, when they all got back to Iowa or Chicago—or wherever it was they were from—they could tell their friends about the town of Twilight Cove, California, and the great-great-great-great-granddaughter of one of its founders and how they met her on the sunset cruise.

  Robin Davis helped her refill the tray, and once the appetizers were gone, Ron signaled to them that it was time to come about. She discovered scrambling along the damp deck a bit more treacherous than she anticipated, but reminded herself she’d been in far more dangerous situations. In no time they had come about and were headed back to Gull Harbor.

  R.J. watched the sun, timing the voyage so that they would reach the dock just as the sun was setting. Basically, her job was through.

  Piece of cake, she thought. She wasn’t making much more an hour than she had been at Mermaids, but she could stomach this job for now. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that she needed a lot more than she was getting paid, she might honestly come to love it.

  Surreptitiously, she studied R.J. as he manned the wheel and continued to charm the dozen or so tourists aboard, pointing out various landmarks along the rugged coastline, regaling them with bits of history.

  His voice filled with admiration when he told them of the Spanish explorers and conquistadors, of Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the first to reach the Pacific Coast at Panama and name the vast ocean, and of Hernando Cortes, who christened California.

  “California was the name of a wonderful island of tall, bronzed Amazons ruled by their pagan Queen Califia. The island was filled with gold and precious stones but no other metals, so the women warriors carried spears of gold. Califia was more beautiful than all other women combined. She was valiant, courageous, and was said to have the bravest of hearts.”

  Sunny suddenly realized R.J. was smiling at her from across the open deck as he concluded, “Califia dreamed of being nobler than any other ruler. She wanted to accomplish great deeds, and she had the spirit it takes to win.”

  Something passed between them in that moment, an intensity that she tried hard to deny, but one she thought about long after the sun went down and the cruise ended.

  She had no idea what the silent exchange had meant to R.J. Maybe nothing at all.

  Maybe she’d only imagined the electri
city that arched between them. For her it was almost visible, stark blue-white and crackling. But the look he’d given her was gone as fast as it had appeared.

  Maybe she hadn’t really seen it at all.

  Chapter 24

  “SO, TELL ME ABOUT the guy who built this house.”

  Ty looked up from the battered old shoe box he’d found in a back closet. Sunny lingered in the doorway her cheeks sunburned from her first full week working aboard the Stargazer.

  “Why do you ask?” He was pleased with her sudden interest in Chandler history, though he couldn’t help but wonder what inspired the question. He took her willingness to chat as a peace offering.

  “R.J. points it out on the cruise and talks about the man who built it.” She looked down at her hands, inspected her nails before she met his eyes. “He said the Chandlers were all seafaring men.”

  Ty nodded. “Come sit down.” He indicated the chair beside him. “They were seafarers. Right up until my father. He decided he’d rather make a living peddling office supplies to accounts all over the western states.”

  One time he’d asked his father why he wasn’t a fisherman, like Granddad, and Thom Chandler claimed it was because he hated fish, boats, and anything to do with the ocean.

  “Granddad Chandler thought my dad took after Grandma’s side of the family. Except for her, they’d all been partial to money and comfort. Fishing, money, and comfort didn’t go hand in hand unless you were a millionaire sports fisherman.”

  Ty fingered the edge of the faded shoe box. “The first Chandler in California jumped ship. He went by the name Elijah Chandler. No one knows his real name.”

  “Why not?”

  “Supposedly he was running from the law. Back in the early eighteen-hundreds, sailing around the tip of South America to get to California took months. It was a voyage to another world back then and a safe bet no one would ever track him down.”

  “What did he do wrong?”

  “Nobody knows. He married a young Californio woman, which enabled him to buy land.”

  “And then he built this house.” She gazed around the room. “So, how did you end up in Alaska?”

  He pictured Amy the day she’d told him she wasn’t ever going to leave River Ridge. She’d found what she’d been looking for. It was the day he realized she needed drugs more than she needed him.

  He opened the box. “You asked if I had any pictures of your mom. I found these.”

  She held her breath as he pulled out a stack of pictures, school photos, yearbook mug shots.

  “These are from our sophomore and junior years at Twilight High.” He noticed her hand was shaking when he handed them to her.

  “I don’t have any pictures of her.” She stared at the photos in her hand. “Wow. She looks so different.”

  He’d looked at the photos earlier. In them, Amy was young and vibrant, smiling into the camera with clear-eyed innocence, as different as the way he remembered her the day she left as the sun from the moon.

  “Here are some more. I didn’t realize I had these.” He handed her a few more. “They’re from junior high.”

  Amy with braces and big hair. Sunny shook her head.

  “I would never have believed it. She looks so young. Like a little girl. I wish . . .”

  “What?”

  “I wish she’d never left here.” She stacked the photos, handed them back.

  “Would you like to keep them?”

  “No. No, you can put them back.”

  “I thought you might like to save them for Alice.”

  “You keep them for her.”

  “I tried to talk your mother into coming back to Twilight, but she was into . . . well, what she was into. I started a fishing camp for tourists using the skills I’d learned from R.J.’s dad and my granddad. I’m thinking about starting a fishing charter out of Gull Harbor.”

  She crossed her arms and leaned against the table. “You said R.J.’s dad and your grandpa taught you to fish and camp? What about your own dad?”

  “He was usually out of town on business, so R.J.’s dad took me along on fishing trips, campouts, horseback rides. He taught both of us how to dismantle a boat engine and repair it. Granddad taught us to clean and fillet fish and bait hooks. My dad died when I was a freshman in high school.”

  All he’d ever learned from his own dad was how to wave good-bye. Sunny was watching him closely, as if weighing the sincerity of his words, so he chose them carefully.

  “I can relate to growing up without a father, believe it or not.”

  “You knew him. You lived with him,” she countered.

  “But sometimes, even though you live right under the same roof, that doesn’t mean they’ll be there for you. My father wasn’t here for me, for whatever reason. That’s not the kind of father I want to be, Sunny.” He met her eyes. She was so serious, so quiet, he wished he knew what she was thinking.

  “You plan on ever going back to Alaska?”

  “I hope not. That chapter of my life is over.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “I came down here to be with your grandmother, Barbara, before she died.” He suddenly remembered something his mother had left him, something that had come to him through her.

  “I’ll be right back. Wait here.”

  He asked Sunny to get him a diet Dr. Pepper while he ran upstairs, and by the time he’d found what he’d been looking for, she was waiting for him with two tall glasses of soda over ice.

  When he held out a small, hand-carved wooden box, she looked at it, then at him. “What’s this?”

  “Open it.”

  Her fingers closed around the box. She laid it in one palm and traced the intricate oriental carving with her fingertip before she removed the lid and carefully set it aside on the coffee table.

  The inside of the box was lined in midnight velvet, and nestled there was a pair of gold filigree earrings set with matching opals. The gemstones caught the sunlight streaming in through the window behind her. The light set off a rainbow of sparkling color.

  “Those were your great-grandmother Chandler’s. She would have wanted you to have them.” He knew it was true. His grandmother had the biggest heart in the world. His mother would have taken one look at Sunny and said, “I told you so.”

  He thought of all the years his mother had kept Sunny’s existence a secret, of everything they had all missed by not knowing one another. He couldn’t bring those years back, but together they could make new memories.

  “These will never make up for all the years we’ve missed.” He wished she’d look up, wished that he could look into her eyes, to see if she cared, but she kept her head down as she fingered the opals.

  “I can’t believe you want me to have these,” she whispered. “They look expensive.”

  “They’re real gold. And they’re very old. My grandfather gave them to my grandmother on their wedding day. They lived right here in this house.”

  She turned the box upside down and tipped the earrings into the palm of her hand. The rainbow colors in the opals shimmered in the light from the window.

  “You can pass those on to Alice when she grows up.” He tried to picture Alice at nineteen, wondered what the world would be like, what Sunny would become, and if the three of them would be close.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets, waited for her to say something, doubted she knew what to say any more than he did.

  He picked up the soda and took a long drink. Then, glass in hand, he told her, “I’m going back out to the garage to finish up those lures. Call me when you’re ready to take off for work and I’ll come get Alice. She ought to be up by then.” He turned to leave.

  “Chandler?” Her voice stopped him at the door. He watched her pour the earrings out of her palm an
d back into the box. “Thank you.” As Ty left the room, he realized this was the very first time that he’d ever really seen her genuinely smile.

  Chapter 25

  KAT REACHED THE top of Lover’s Lane, paused high on the golden hillside overlooking the coastline, and stopped to enjoy the panoramic view.

  She found herself looking forward to the quiet solitude of the long walks she’d been taking at dawn for the last few days. Walking along the winding road to the top of the hill was like a meditation.

  She had expected time to crawl by in a place like Twilight Cove, thought that the days would be long and the hours empty compared to the pace of the city, but exactly the opposite proved true.

  For the life of her, she didn’t know where the weeks had gone, but looking back now, she realized that her time here had slipped through her fingers as quickly as dry sand.

  Jake’s plan to get her out of the city and her self-imposed isolation had succeeded all too well. A month ago, if he’d have asked her to imagine spending time walking on the beach, toasting the sunset with a glass of wine, watching old movies with someone special, she would have laughed and called him crazy.

  Lately the thought of leaving made her ache in all the secret corners of her heart, places where she hadn’t ached in a long time.

  This morning, the breeze off the water blew across the land and the hilltop, bringing with it the taste and smell of the sea. Staring out at the blue water dappled with crests of whitecaps, she came to the realization that she needed to put time and space between herself and Ty, to get away, go back to the city, and see if the feelings they had for each other would survive.

  “I wish you’d think about staying in Twilight.”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  She heard his voice in her head and wished that she still had the ability to see life as something fresh and new, that she still woke up every morning believing in a world full of endless possibilities, but she wasn’t the girl she used to be.