Beside a Dreamswept Sea (45 page)

Tears streamed down her face and the fear she would have sworn could grow no stronger doubled. She placed one foot in front of the other, began that last climb up to Tony’s room, recalling he’d moved up there to gain that safe independence in his journey from boy to man. And there he had remained until he’d left home for the war. Until he’d died saving the life of one of his men. Her soldier. Her beloved soldier hadn’t been spiny. He’d been brave, and she would be brave, too.

She reached the top of the stairs, then turned on the light.

Stark and white, the dustcovers lay still atop the furniture. The temperature remained warm.

Her heart shattered.

Her beloved had gone.

A fissure of fear cracked open inside him. “What does that mean?”

She cupped his face, smoothed her fingertips along his beard, and swallowed hard. “I won’t let him hurt you and the children. He can’t put all of you through this—it’d affect your ability to provide for the family financially. I can’t let that happen.”

“I don’t like the sounds of this.” Bryce grimaced, fearing he knew what next would come out of her mouth, and honestly hating it.

Her eyes shining overly bright, she whispered, “I can’t marry you.”

“That’s not an option.”

“It’s the only option I have. You and the kids need calm and security. If I don’t call him and put a stop to this, you’ll have neither. And I’m telling you, Bryce, I have fourteen years’ worth of experience that tells me he’ll stop at nothing—at nothing—to get what he wants.” Her swallow rippled her throat and her voice went husky thick. “I love the kids, and I care for you. I can’t, I won’t, let this happen.”

She stood up then headed toward the door.

Bryce went after her. At the bookcase near the hall leading to the gallery, he caught her by the shoulder. “Cally, wait.”

She kept going.

“Cally, please.” Bryce held her more firmly, insisting she stop.

She turned to look at him, her heartbreak clear on her face, in the depths of her tormented eyes. “I have to do this. I wanted to be sunshine to you, Bryce, not storms. I can’t live with me, causing all of you pain.” Her chin quivered. “I just can’t.”

He closed his arms around her. “You are sunshine to us. Being with you, even with trouble, is better than being without you, Cally. Don’t you see that? Isn’t it obvious to you that we all need you? The kids and me?”

A sob escaped her throat and deep shudders wracked her body. She buried her face at the cay in his neck. “Why is he doing this? He’s gotten exactly what he wanted. Everything he wanted. Why isn’t that enough for him?”

Bryce had his suspicions. After the conversation today, he felt certain Gregory Tate didn’t want Cally, he just didn’t want anyone else to have her. Bryce couldn’t tell her that, of course. Or that he had done the unthinkable and fallen in love with her when they’d agreed that love would have no part in their relationship. Yet without telling her, he had no way to hold her. He needed her. He and the kids needed her. Wanted her. Loved her. And no way was he going to let Gregory Tate take her from them. Not now. Not ever.

When her sobs weakened to sniffles, he kissed the tears from her damp cheeks, letting his thumbs whisk across the ruddy blades of her cheekbones. “Let’s think about this overnight, okay? Before we do anything. We’re emotional about it. And we both know what happens when we act on our emotions rather than on logic.”

She nodded. “Okay. But I won’t let him hurt you or the M and M’s. I could sleep longer than Rip Van Winkle and that would never change.”

Her insistence yanked hard at protective chords inside him, and he gave her a tender smile. “I know you won’t, sweetheart.”

Just after dawn,
Cally awakened in a cold sweat. She sat straight up in bed, her heart pounding in her temples, and waited for the dread and fear from the dream to subside and the cobwebs of sleep to fall clear from her mind.

“It was just a dream.” She buried her face in her hands and repeated the litany a few more times, praying it’d take hold in her mind. “It was just a dream. It was just a dream.”

But was it?

Suzie’s wasn’t an ordinary dream. Cally knew that as well as she knew she sat in her bed in the Great White Room. She pulled up her knees, scrunched the quilts at her chin, then tried to put into order the vivid images she’d seen in her mind.

She’d been at Mary Beth’s grave at home, with the yellow carnation. She’d put it there at the base of the headstone, just as she always had, but when she’d straightened up and turned around, Hatch had stood there beside her, his corncob pipe propped between his lips. With his wizen eyes, he was staring intently at her. Words he’d said to her before, and those she’d heard others say, tumbled from his lips in a great rush:

Decide what you really want, Cally. Seek your strength in love. Decide what you fear more. Is it Gregory? Or is it loving and losing Bryce and the M and M’s?

She did fear Gregory. She knew how low he’d stoop, how far he’d go. With the vasectomy and the reversal of it, how could she not know? But more than she feared him, she loved Bryce. And the M and M’s. And, God give her strength, she feared losing them more than she’d feared anything in her life.

You’ve got to get and keep both oars in the water. Suzie’s dream’s a premonition, in my estimation. You’ll be their new mom, maybe.

The oars. Suzie’s grown-up friend Selena’s words to Suzie. The premonition. A warning from Hatch? He was the only man she’d ever heard use that “in my estimation” phrase. Cally wasn’t sure, but it seemed like a warning, and it felt like a warning. In the dream, Suzie drowned. Was the warning that Cally should watch over Suzie more closely, or that she could drown in real life? And the “new mom” verbiage. Suzie’s prophesy—or maybe Tony’s prophesy related by Suzie to Cally, on the day Cally arrived at Seascape Inn.

If only you have the courage to believe, miracles can happen beside a dreamswept sea.

Are you believing, Cally? Are you believing?

Cally stilled. Was she believing?

All of this. Hatch’s saying down at the pond that if she ran into special trouble to come to him. The woman’s voice at Mary Elizabeth’s grave.

Oh, God, this with Suzie tonight hadn’t been a dream. It’d been a message to Cally—from the woman. A warning.

Who was she?

Cally stared past the mirror and thought hard. There were two possibilities. Meriam or Mary Elizabeth.

Frankly Cally considered Meriam too self-focused for it to be her. And she was content. Poor Bryce had been terribly upset about that. No, not Meriam. Between the battleaxe and Bryce, Meriam had left them feeling certain of their ability to deal with whatever lay ahead.

That left Mary Elizabeth. Why she’d bother, Cally had no idea. But maybe enough of her mother, Cecelia, was in her daughter that when Cally had gone to Mary Elizabeth’s grave she’d felt compelled to somehow warn Cally. Or maybe not.

For some reason, the messenger being Mary Elizabeth fit, and yet it didn’t fit. It felt both right and wrong.

Why, Cally would have to sort out later. Right now, she had other things to do. A priority listing. She was going to marry Bryce today. But not until after she confronted a demon that she damn well should have confronted a long time ago.

She tossed back the covers and walked over to the mirror, fury fueling her steps, then stared directly into her own eyes. Gregory Tate had pushed her hard for a long time. But in threatening her now, in threatening Bryce and the kids, the man had pushed her too far. He’d pushed those she loved.

And now she was going to push back.

The ivory and white phone on the dresser beckoned her. Knowing the thing worked more often than not only when it wanted, she was determined that it would work right now.

She lifted the receiver, then put it to her ear. On hearing the dial tone, she smiled. “If only you have the courage to believe . . .”

After dialing the number, she jotted down a note to herself to tell Miss Hattie about the charges, then let her gaze drift out of the windows. Pink and lavender tinged the sky in languid streaks, and the sun sat like a brilliant orange ball out over the ocean on the horizon. It was dawn. About five A.M. in Mississippi, where Gregory and Joleen now lived. He wouldn’t be awake yet—not for another two hours, typically. And it gave Cally a perverse pleasure that she’d disturb him at an inconvenient time. Not very noble, but pleasing nonetheless.

The phone rang for the third time.

Groggy-voiced, he answered. “Tate.”

“Gregory, this is Cally. I want to talk to you.”

“Caline.” He sounded surprised. “I want to talk to you, too.” Something rustled in the background as if he were shoving at covers to get out of bed. “Hold on and let me get to another phone.”

Obviously, he didn’t want to wake his wife. “Fine.”

During the wait, she crossed her free hand over her chest, stood bouncing her hip against the side of the dresser.

“Okay.” He came back on the line. “Listen, Caline.”

“I prefer Cally.”

“I see. Well, what I want to say is that I’m sorry I flew off the handle yesterday. The trouble is”—he paused dramatically, as only Gregory could—“I’m not happy.”

The sorry animal cracker. The fear inside her dissipated. She’d slipped back into the habit of giving him power over her. But fear wasn’t as strong as love. And she loved Bryce. “A guilty conscience can do that to you, Doctor.”

“Yes, it can. Would it help if I said I was sorry?”

“It couldn’t hurt.”

“I am sorry, and I—I—hell, Caline, I want you back.”

“Excuse me?” She pulled the phone away from her ear, stared at it as if it’d sprouted horns.

“I’m not happy. Joleen is just like my mother. She has all the time in the world for kids, but none for me. She doesn’t do all the things you did for me.”

His mother, the pediatrician, and his wife, the biochemist. “No other woman would do all those things for you. And it’s damned selfish of you to expect them to. It’s even worse for you to compare us. How dare you do that?”