Autumn Dreams (36 page)

Dan pulled his chair close to hers. He reached for her hands. “Reaction shivers. That’s all.” He rubbed his thumbs over the backs of her hands.

“Mmm.” She closed her eyes and tried to think happy thoughts, tried to forget what might have happened if Jenn hadn’t escaped. It didn’t work. The shivers continued. “So close, Dan. So close!”

“But she saved herself, Cass. Be proud of her.”

“I am—when I’m not still terrified. Or furious.” She scowled at him. “How could she have been so stupid?”

Dan gave a half grin. “She’s sixteen. Do you remember how mature you were at that age?”

She gave him a small wry smile and felt it wobble. “I haven’t thanked you yet for all you did to help. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” She blinked against sudden tears. “You were wonderful.”

Dan’s eyes became bright with emotion. “You were the one who was wonderful.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You handled those kids just right.”

“Strictly the grace of God.” Cass sighed. “I never realized how hard being a parent is, especially without the first sixteen years to set the pace.”

They sat in a comfortable silence until Cass glanced at the clock on the wall.

Twelve thirty-five. She blinked and pushed to her feet.

“Yikes! Look at the time!”

Dan studied the clock. “Lunch.”

“Lunch, my foot. It’s time to get to work. There’s so much to do before tomorrow. I’ve got to visit Mom, finish getting ready for Software Solutions, and call and cancel tonight. And then there’s Rodney.”

Dan frowned at her. “Why are you canceling tonight? Go. It’ll be good for you.”

She sighed. “I can’t leave Jenn. Not after today. “

He picked up her glass and took a drink. “Sure you can.” He downed the rest of the water.

Cass shook her head. “She’ll need me around. I’ll just go some other time.”

“Cass, honey, she’ll be fine. Jared and Paulie aren’t going to leave her side for quite some time. They’ll take care of her. And Brenna will be here.”

Cass closed her eyes. She had been looking forward to being away from the kids, much as she loved them, to being accountable just to herself for a few hours. “I’d feel like I was deserting the ship.”

“Miss Responsibility.” Dan gave her a warm, tender smile. “You need to get away, even if it’s only for one night.”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Trying to get rid of me, are you?”

Dan put the empty glass in the dishwasher. “Just the opposite. I was going to offer to drive you down to Cape May.”

Drive her? “I couldn’t let you do that. It’s too far. Besides—” she paused and saw him stiffen—“you’re our guest.”

“Cass!” He looked like a thundercloud ready to unleash a wild and woolly lightning bolt.

She grinned. “Gotcha.”

He growled at her as he grabbed her in a bear hug. “Terrible woman.”

Her grin broadened, then disappeared. “Seriously, Dan, it’s too far. It’s not like driving me a couple of blocks to my parents’.”

He frowned. “I wasn’t planning to just drop you off, you know. I thought I just might try that B&B too.”

She stared at him. “W-what?”

He fidgeted uncomfortably. “I thought I could, um, you know, go along and sort of help you with your industrial espionage and all.”

Help her with her spying? “You want to go to Cape May with me?”

He nodded.

“But why?” Was he so bored here that even a quick trip to Cape May looked exciting? Or did he think she couldn’t manage by herself, especially with Rodney coming?

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Not reason enough. Why?”

He looked directly into her eyes. “Because I want to be with you.”

She stared. People didn’t go places simply to be with her. At least men people didn’t. Her voice sounded breathless when she said, “You’d better call for a reservation.”

He looked slightly embarrassed. “I called yesterday. After our ‘discussion’ on the boardwalk.”

“What?” She couldn’t believe it. “And you didn’t tell me?”

“I was going to tell you after dinner last night, but things got a bit wild.”

Well, that was certainly true. Still, she couldn’t believe he wanted to go to Cape May with her. Just to be with her. Her! She felt warm and cozy inside, especially since she knew she’d never have had the nerve to ask him to come along.

“I think we should leave in time to be there for their high tea this afternoon,” he said. “How about two?”

Cass nodded, dazed. “I’ve still got to visit Mom, and make certain we’re ready for the Software Solutions group tomorrow.”

“Well, then let’s get to it. Where’s your checklist of things to be ready for Rodney?”

Russell House was a lovely old Victorian painted yellow with navy, royal blue, and white trim. It had been built in the 1880s after the great fire in 1878 destroyed Cape May’s entire hotel district with its tightly packed wooden structures. Warren Islington Russell of Philadelphia, who made his fortune in canned goods, built the place for his wife and eleven children to spend their summers in the healthful climate of the seaside. He commuted weekends from Philadelphia on the train that ran right through Seaside on its way to Cape May on the southern tip of New Jersey. The Russells were long gone, and the present owners had done to the grand old house much the same thing Cass had done to SeaSong.

“You’ll love it,” she assured Dan as he drove south on the Garden State Parkway.

She still couldn’t believe he was seated beside her. What a wonderful memory the trip would make after he left. Firmly she pushed aside the empty feeling any thought of his departure brought. She was going to enjoy this special interlude to its fullest.

Warm and welcoming, Russell House was filled with marvelous antiques. After they were shown to their rooms, Cass and Dan wandered through the common rooms and studied the wealth of history present in the pieces of furniture, the paintings, and the objet d’art.

“Look at this wonderful hand-painted chocolate set.” Cass lightly skimmed her forefinger over the tall, narrow china pitcher covered with clusters of bluebells tied with golden ribbons. Small cups, also covered with the bluebells and ribbons, sat on tiny saucers edged in gold leaf. “It must be at least a hundred years old.”

Dan squinted at the cups. “The trick must have been to drink a lot of water before you came for chocolate because one of those little cups would never satisfy anyone, especially not a guy my size.”

“They didn’t have guys your size back then.”

“It’s a good thing because how could someone with large hands ever hold the delicate thing? There’s no way my finger would ever fit that handle.”

Cass looked from the slim golden handles to Dan’s massive
hands. High tea ought to be very interesting. Dainty cups with fragile handles would be all that was available, though the teacups would be larger than chocolate cups.

An hour later, Dan stood with a steaming cup and saucer in Spode’s Billingsley Rose pattern in one hand and a matching dish filled with petits fours, slivers of cucumber sandwiches, a thin slice of nut bread spread with an equally thin layer of cream cheese, a pair of small raisin scones topped with clotted cream, two meringues, and a small pile of cashews, carefully selected from the mixed nuts available. Cass held pale blue Wedgwood ringed with white flowers and a bit less food. She spotted a vacant pair of balloon back chairs with beautiful petit point seats and headed for them, Dan trailing. They sat.

Cass carefully set her plate of food on her lap and took a sip of her Earl Grey. She thought again how glad she was that she had come. With life going nonstop at the moment, it was delightful to sit and sip a cup of tea that someone else had prepared. She looked forward to sleeping in a bed someone else had made, eating a breakfast someone else had cooked, and leaving all her mess for someone else to clean up.

“Isn’t this great?” She turned to Dan, only to find him sitting stiffly with both hands still full.

“There’s no place to put this stuff down,” he hissed.

She grinned. How many times had she seen the brothers with both hands full and no place to put something down? “That’s because you don’t have a lap,” she said. “You have to sit with your knees together.”

He looked horrified. “Not me. The only way I sit with my knees together is when I stretch my legs out with my ankles crossed.” He demonstrated and immediately another guest almost tripped over him. With a quick apology, Dan pulled his legs back.

Cass tried not to laugh. “Don’t want to try balancing a dish on your kneecap?”

“Laugh all you want,” Dan said, feigning sorrow. “I’ll just sit here and suffer.”

Cass glanced around the room and found every flat surface covered with something—a Royal Doulton figurine, a miniature painting on a little easel, a bouquet of fresh flowers, one of an unending collection of vintage candlesticks of all sizes and materials,
a hand-painted porcelain dish or pitcher.

Reminder: Make certain there were plenty of spaces at SeaSong for people to put things down. She might not do elegant high tea, but she often offered iced tea or lemonade in the late afternoon with crackers and cheeses
.

“I need a TV tray.” Dan looked ready to lick the food off his plate if he didn’t soon find a solution.

“Not in a classy place like this.” Cass held out her hand. “Here. Give me your tea.”

He handed it over and began working on his plateful of food. “But what about you? Now both your hands are tied up.”

“It’ll take you about ten seconds to eat that food. Then you can put your teacup and saucer on top of the empty plate.”

It was more like a minute and a half before all the dainty tea food disappeared from Dan’s plate and he took his cup and saucer back. Cass gave him full marks for sipping his tea instead of swallowing it in a couple of gulps like the brothers would have done. When he finished, he waited patiently in the chair that was really too small for his bulk while she took her time savoring the experience.

After tea they wandered hand in hand through Cape May, peering into shop windows until closing time, looking at all the beautiful Victorian mansions for which the town was famous, and walking on the beach in the early evening darkness.

“Surf’s high,” Dan said as the wind ruffled their hair. “You can hear it.”

“Rodney’s almost here. If it keeps coming up the Chesapeake Bay like it is, the tides won’t be as high as if it were hitting from the sea. We’ll still have lots of rain but much less flooding.”

“I’ve never heard of a hurricane following a path like this one. Inland in Virginia, up the Bay.”

“Usually once a hurricane makes landfall, it blows itself out,” Cass said. “But coming up the Chesapeake seems to be keeping this one strong. All that open space and water, I guess. The question becomes will it keep traveling north and smash Pennsylvania, or will it curl east back toward the Atlantic.”

“And you have no prognostication?”

She shook her head as she watched the moon disappear behind dark clouds. A soft drizzle began to fall, blown in their
faces by the ever-increasing wind. Cass pulled her Indiana Jones hat from her pocket and put it on.

Dan grinned at her hat. “I like.”

I like too
, she thought.
Oh, how I like
.

They enjoyed dinner in a lovely little candlelit restaurant that Cass thought was the most romantic place in which she had ever eaten. Of course, the handsome man seated across from her might have had more to do with the ambience than the candles. As she stared at him as he studied the menu, she felt incandescent, lit from within. She suspected her joy glowed on her face since she couldn’t stop smiling.

Dan glanced up, his nose wrinkling. “Cass, do you smell something burning?”

She blinked. “Umm?”

“Burning.” He gulped and pointed. “Your menu!”

Cass stared in horror at the little flames eating away at the edges of her oversize bill of fare. While she had been staring at Dan, the heavy paper had dipped to rest against one of the candles on their table, eventually igniting. She dropped the menu onto the table and began squashing the flames with her napkin. Dan reached over and helped. The small blaze was extinguished in seconds, but it left Cass’s menu looking like a replica of an old document whose edges were singed and darkened by time.

When she handed it back to the waiter after placing her order, she smiled sweetly, acting like nothing was amiss. After a momentary facial tic at the sight of the burnt paper, so did the waiter. Cass and Dan were still laughing when their salads arrived.

Dan broke off a piece of roll and buttered it. “I’ll be driving to Philadelphia on Monday to meet with Adam Streeter of Go and Tell International.”

Cass nodded. “It’s so wonderful how you’re helping him.” She took a bite of her crab cakes. “How long will you be gone?”

He speared a piece of his filet mignon. “I’ll probably spend two days with Adam. Then I thought I’d run up to New York to see how things are going at home.”

Home. He was going home. What if he got there and decided to stay? Cass felt her glow dim dramatically. She busied herself with her food so he wouldn’t see her face.