The Dream (Crosslyn Rise Trilogy) Page 8

  With a sigh, she turned and started slowly back on the path. It was several minutes before Carter caught up with her. “What do you think?” she asked without looking at him.

  “It would work.”

  “If you’d like more time there, feel free. You can meet me up at the house.”

  “Are you cold?” he asked, because she was still hugging the blazer around her.

  “No. I’m fine.”

  He glanced back toward the meadow, “Well, so am I. This is just a preliminary walk-through. I’ve seen enough for now. What’s next?”

  “The pine grove.”

  That surprised him. “Over on the other side of the house?” When she nodded, he said, “Are you sure you want to build there?”

  She looked up at him then. “I need a third spot. If you can think of someplace better, I’m open for suggestion.”

  Drudging up what he remembered of the south end of the property, he had to admit that the pine grove seemed the obvious choice. “But that will mean cutting. The entire area is populated with trees. There isn’t any sizable clearing to speak of, not like at the duck pond or in the meadow.” He shook his head. “I’d hate to have to take down a single one of those pines.”

  Jessica took in a deep breath and said sadly, “So now you know what I’m feeling about this project. It’s a travesty, isn’t it? But I have no choice.” Determined to remain strong and in control, she turned her eyes forward and continued on.

  For the first time, Carter did know what she felt. It was one thing when he was dealing with the idea—and his memory—of Crosslyn Rise, another when he was walking there, seeing, smelling and feeling the place, being surrounded by the natural majesty that was suddenly at the mercy of humans.

  When they reached the pine grove, he was more acutely aware of that natural majesty than ever. Trees that had been growing for scores of years stretched toward the heavens as though they had an intimate connection with the place. Lower to the ground were younger versions, even lower than that shrubs that thrived in the shade. The carpeting underfoot was a tapestry of fine moss and pine needles. The pervasive scent was distinct and divine.

  I have no choice, Jessica had said on a variation of the theme she’d repeated more than once, and he believed her. That made him all the more determined to design something special.

  Jessica was almost sorry when they returned to the house. Yes, she was a little chilled, though she wouldn’t have said a word to Carter lest, heaven forbid, he offer her his jacket, but the wide open spaces made his masculinity a little less commanding. Once indoors, there would be nothing to dilute it.

  “You’ll want to go through the house,” she guessed, more nervous as they made their way across the back porch and entered the kitchen.

  “I ought to,” he said. “But that coffee smells good. Mind if I take a cup with me?”

  She was grateful for something to do. “Cream or sugar?”

  “Both.”

  As efficiently as possible, given the awkwardness stirring inside her, she poured him a mugful of the dark brew and prepared it as he liked it.

  “You aren’t having any?” he asked when she handed him the mug.

  She didn’t dare. Her hands were none too steady, and caffeine wouldn’t help. “Maybe later,” she said, and in as businesslike a manner as she could manage, led him off on a tour of the house.

  The tour should have been fairly routine through the first floor, most of which Carter had seen at one time or another. But he’d never seen it before with a knowledge of architecture, and that made all the difference. High ceilings, chair rails and door moldings, antique mantelpieces on the three other first-floor fireplaces—he was duly impressed, and his comments to that extent came freely.

  His observations were professional enough to lessen the discomfort Jessica felt when they climbed the grand stairway to the second floor. Still she felt discomfort aplenty, and she couldn’t blame it on the past. Something had happened when Carter had kissed her. He’d awoken her to the man he was. Her awareness of him now wasn’t of the boy she’d hated but of the man she wished she could. Because that man was calm, confident and commanding, all the things she wanted to be just then, but wasn’t. In comparison to him, she felt inadequate, and, feeling inadequate, she did what she could to blend into the woodwork.

  It worked just fine as they made their way from one end of the long hall down and around a bend to the other end. Carter saw the once-glorious master bedroom that hadn’t been used in years; he saw a handful of other bedrooms, some with fireplaces, and more bathrooms than he’d ever dreamed his mother had cleaned. He took everything in, sipping his coffee as he silently made notes in his mind. Only when he reached the last bedroom, the one by the back stairs, did his interest turn personal.

  “This is yours,” he said. He didn’t have to catch her nod to know that it was, but not even the uncomfortable look on her face could have kept him from stepping inside. The room was smaller than most of the others and decorated more simply, with floral wallpaper and white furniture.

  Helpless to stop himself, he scanned the paired bookshelves to find foreign volumes and literary works fully integrated with works of popular fiction. He ran a finger along the dresser, passed a mirrored tray bearing a collection of antique perfume bottles and paused at a single framed photograph. It was a portrait of Jessica with her parents when she was no more than five years old; she looked exactly as he remembered her. It was a minute before he moved on to an old trunk, painted white and covered with journals, and an easy chair upholstered in the same faded pastel pattern as the walls. Then his gaze came to rest on the bed. It was a double bed, dressed in a nubby white spread with an array of lacy white pillows of various shapes and sizes lying beneath the scrolled headboard.

  The room was very much like her, Carter mused. It was clean and pure, a little welcoming, a little off-putting, a little curious. It was the kind of room that hinted at exciting things in the nooks and crannies, just beyond the pristine front.

  Quietly, for quiet was what the room called for, he asked, “Was this where you grew up?”

  “No,” she said quickly, eager to answer and return downstairs. “I moved here to save heating the rest of the house.”

  The rationale was sound. “This is above the kitchen, so it stays warm.”

  “Yes.” She took a step backward in a none-too-subtle hint, but he didn’t budge. In any other area of the house, she’d have gone anyway and left him to follow. But this was her room. She couldn’t leave him alone here; that would have been too much a violation of her private space.

  “I like the picture,” he said, tossing his head toward the dresser. A small smile played at the corner of his mouth. “It brings back memories.”

  She focused on the photograph so that she wouldn’t have to see his smile. “It’s supposed to. That was a rare family occasion.”

  “What occasion?”

  “Thanksgiving.”

  He didn’t understand. “What’s so rare about Thanksgiving?”

  “My father joined us for dinner.”

  Carter studied her face, trying to decide if she was being facetious. He didn’t think so. “You mean, he didn’t usually do it?”

  “It was hit or miss. If he was in the middle of something intense, he wouldn’t take a break.”

  “Not even for Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “No,” she said evenly, and met his gaze. “Are you done here? Can we go down?”

  He showed no sign of having heard her. “That’s really incredible. I always pictured holidays at Crosslyn Rise as being spectacular—you know, steeped in tradition, everything warm and pretty and lavish.”

  “It was all that. But it was also lonely.”

  “Was that why you married so young?” When her eyes flew to his, he added, “My mother said you were twenty.”

  She wanted to know whether he’d specifically asked for the details and felt a glimmer of annoyance that he might be prying behind her back. So
mehow, though, she couldn’t get herself to be sharp with him. She was tired of sounding like a harpy when his interest seemed so innocent.

  “Maybe I was lonely. I’m not sure. At the time I thought I was in love.”

  Obviously she’d changed her mind at some point, he mused. “How long did it last?”

  “Didn’t your mother tell you that?”

  “She said it was none of my business, and it’s not. If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.

  Jessica rested against the doorjamb. She touched the wood, rubbed a bruised spot. “It’s no great secret.” It was, after all, a matter of public record. “We were divorced two years after we married.”

  “What happened?”

  She frowned at the paint. “We were different people with different goals.”

  “Who was he?”

  She paused. “Tom Chandler.” Her arm stole around her middle. “You wouldn’t have known him.”

  “Not from around here?”

  She shook her head. “Saint Louis. I was a sophomore in college, he was a senior. He wanted to be a writer and figured that I’d support him. He thought we were rich.” The irony of it was so strong that she was beyond embarrassment. Looking Carter in the eye, she said, “You were right. Bribery was about the only way I’d get a man. But it took me two years to realize that was what had done it.”

  Carter came forward, drawn by the pallor of her face and the haunted look in her eyes, either of which was preferable to the unemotional way she was telling him something that had to be horribly painful for her. “I don’t understand.”

  “Tom fell in love with Crosslyn Rise. He liked the idea of living on an estate. He liked the idea of my father being a genius. He liked the idea of my mother devoting herself to taking care of my father, because Tom figured that was what I’d do for him. Mostly, he liked the idea of turning the attic into a garret and spending his days there reading and thinking and staring out into space.”

  “Then you tired of the marriage before he did?”

  “I … suppose you could say that. He tired of me pretty quickly, but he was perfectly satisfied with the marriage. That was when I realized my mistake.”

  There was a world of hurt that she wasn’t expressing, but Carter saw it in her eyes. It was all he could do not to reach out to help, but he wasn’t sure his help would be welcome. So he said simply, “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about.” She forced a brittle smile. “Two years. That was all. I was finishing my undergraduate degree, so I went right on for my Ph.D., which was what I’d been planning to do all along.”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work out. Maybe if you’d had someone to help with the situation here—”

  “Not Tom. Forget Tom. He was about as adept with finances as my mother and twice as disinterested.”

  “Still, it might not have been so difficult if you hadn’t been alone.”

  She tore her eyes from his. “Yes, well, life is never perfect.” She looked at the bright side, which was what she’d tried hard to do over the years. “I have a lot to be grateful for. I have my work. I love that, and I do it well. I’ve made good friends. And I have Crosslyn—” she caught herself and finished in a near whisper “—Crosslyn Rise.” Uncaring whether he stayed in her room or not, she turned and went quickly down the back stairs.

  When Carter joined her, Jessica was standing stiffly at the counter, taking a sip of the coffee she’d poured herself. Setting the mug down, she raised her chin and asked, “So, where do we go from here as far as this project is concerned?”

  Carter would have liked to talk more about the legacy of her marriage, if only to exorcise that haunted look from her eyes. His good sense told him, though, that such a discussion was better saved for another time. He was surprised that she’d confided in him as much as she had. Friends did that. It was a good sign.

  “Now you talk to me some more about what you want,” he said. “But first I have to get my briefcase from the car. I’ll be right back.”

  Left alone in the kitchen for those few short moments, Jessica took several long, deep breaths. She didn’t seem able to do that when Carter was around. He was a physical presence, dominating whatever room he was in. But she couldn’t say that the domination was deliberate—or offensive, for that matter. He was doing his best to be agreeable. It wasn’t his fault that he was so tall, or that his voice had such resonance, or that he exuded an aura of power.

  “Do you have the list?” he asked, striding back into the kitchen. When she nodded and pointed to a pad of paper waiting on the round oak table nearby, he set his briefcase beside it. Then he retrieved his coffee mug. “Mind if I take a refill?”

  “Of course not.” She reached for the glass carafe and proceeded to fix his coffee with cream and sugar, just as he’d had it before. When he protested that he could do it, she waved him away. She was grateful to be active and efficient.

  Carrying both mugs, she led him to the table, which filled a semicircular alcove off the kitchen. The walls of the alcove were windowed, offering a view of the woods that had enchanted Jessica on many a morning. On this morning, she was too aware of Carter to pay much heed to the pair of cardinals decorating the Douglas fir with twin spots of red.

  “Want to start from the top?” Carter asked, eyeing her list.

  She did that. Point by point, she ran through her ideas. Most were ones she’d touched on before, but there were others, smaller thoughts—ranging from facilities at the clubhouse to paint colors—that had come to her and seemed worth mentioning. She began tentatively and gained courage as she went.

  Carter listened closely. He asked questions and made notes. Though he pointed out the downside of some of her ideas, not once did he make her feel as though something she said was foolish. Often he illustrated one point or another by giving examples from his own experience, and she was fascinated by those. Clearly he enjoyed his work and knew what he was talking about. By the time he rose to leave, she was feeling surprisingly comfortable with the idea of Carter designing the new Crosslyn Rise.

  That comfort was from the professional standpoint.

  From a personal standpoint, she was feeling no comfort at all. For no sooner had that low blue car of his purred down the driveway than she thought about his kiss. Her pulse tripped, her cheeks went pink, her lips tingled—all well after the fact. On the one hand, she was gratified that she’d had such control over herself while Carter had been there. On the other hand, she was appalled at the extent of her reaction now that he was gone.

  Particularly since she hadn’t liked his kiss.

  But she had. She had. It had been warm, smooth, wet. And it had been short. Maybe that was why she’d liked it. It hadn’t lasted long enough for her to be nervous or frightened or embarrassed. Nor had it lasted long enough to provide much more than a tempting sample of something new and different. She’d never been given a kiss like that before—not from a date, of which there hadn’t been many of the kissing type, and certainly not from Tom. Tom had been as self-centered in lovemaking as he’d been in everything else. A kiss from Tom had been a boring experience.

  Carter’s kiss, short though it was, hadn’t been boring at all. In fact, Jessica realized, she wouldn’t mind experiencing it again—which was a truly dismaying thought. She’d never been the physical type, and to find herself entertaining physical thoughts about Carter Malloy was too much.

  Chalking those thoughts up to a momentary mental quirk, she gathered her things together and headed for Cambridge.

  The diversionary tactic worked. Not once while she was at work did she think of Carter, and it wasn’t simply that she kept busy. She took time out late in the afternoon for a relaxed sandwich break with two male colleagues, then did some errands in the Square and even stopped at the supermarket on her way home—none of which were intellectually demanding activities. Her mind might have easily wandered, but it didn’t.

  No, she didn’t think about Carter until she got
home, and then, as though to make up for the hours before, she couldn’t escape him. Every room in the house held a memory of his presence, some more so than others. Most intensely haunted were the kitchen and her bedroom, the two rooms in which she spent the majority of her at-home hours. Standing at the bedroom door as she had done when he’d been inside, sitting once again at the kitchen table, she saw him as he’d been, remembered every word he’d said, felt his presence as though he were there still.

  It was the recency of his visit, she told herself, but the rationalization did nothing to dismiss the memories. By walking through her home, by looking at all the little things that were intimate to her, he had touched her private self.

  She wanted to be angry. She tried and tried to muster it, but something was missing. There was no offense. She didn’t feel violated, simply touched.

  And that gave her even more to consider. The Carter she’d known as a kid had been a violater from the start; the Carter who had reentered her life wasn’t like that at all. When the old Carter had come near, she’d trembled in anger, indignation and, finally, humiliation; when the new Carter came near, the trembling was from something else.

  She didn’t want to think about it, but there seemed no escape. No sooner would she immerse herself in a diversion than the diversionary shell cracked. Such was the case when she launched into her nightly workout in front of the VCR; rather than concentrate on the routine or the aerobic benefits of the exercise, she found herself thinking about body tone and wondering whether she looked better at thirty-three for the exercise she did, than she’d looked at twenty-five. And when she wondered why she cared, she thought of Carter.

  When, sweaty and tired, she sank into a hot bath, she found her body tingling long after she should have felt pleasantly drowsy, and when she stopped to analyze those tingles, she thought of Carter.

  When, wearing a long white nightgown with ruffles at the bodice, she settled into the bedroom easy chair, with a lapful of reading matter that should have captured her attention, her attention wandered to those things that Carter had seen and touched. She pictured him as he had stood that morning, looking tall and dark, uncompromisingly male, and curious about her. She spent a long time thinking about that curiosity, trying to focus in on its cause.