A Woman's Heart (25 page)

"He knows that already," Peter said softly. Then he stared into Jann's eyes so long, she felt they could stay that way forever. "Come with us," he whispered.

She turned away, hot tears blinding her vision. "I can't," she said hoarsely. "There's nothing for me there."

Taking hold of her shoulder, Peter spun her around. "You're wrong," he said, seeming to want to say more. "Alex needs you," he said, instead.

Alex was only half of what she needed. With a hungry look at them both and mustering every ounce of courage she possessed, Jann plunged down the companionway and slammed the hatch shut.

It seemed a long time she stood in the cabin below, with her breath held so tightly she felt her lungs might burst. Until at last she heard Peter's footsteps fade away down the dock.

* * *

The days slipped painfully by. One week. Then two. Still no word. Not even a phone call to tell her they'd arrived in Boston safely. Nor a letter to say Alex was happy and adjusting.

Nothing.

But of course there would be nothing. It was over.

* * *

"You can't hide away forever," Ruby chided her briskly, sweeping onto Jann's boat like a miniature tornado. "It's not healthy." She lifted her too-wide sunglasses and peered down her nose at Jann. "You're skin and bones," she observed critically. "If you're not careful, you'll blow away."

Jann gazed bleakly up at her from the batch of photos she had just developed. The top one was of Peter grinning from behind the wheel of her boat. The one beneath was of him also, holding Alex on the day of the picnic. The leaden feeling in Jann's stomach intensified.

"Why don't you go to him, child?" Ruby suggested, her brown forehead creased with worry.

"You know why I can't." She bit her lip to keep from crying.

Ruby snorted. "Peter cares about you. More importantly, you care. You care about Alex and you care about Peter. That's reason enough."

"Peter doesn't love me," Jann said again, as she had said many times to her friend over the past two weeks.

Ruby snorted again, and her eyes seemed to magnify, to grow larger and larger until there was no escaping their pool of pity. The cabin walls, too, seemed to be moving in on Jann, suffocating her with their closeness, accusing her of cowardice. Her boat had always been a haven, but without Alex and Peter, it had become a prison.

She wanted to be with them, behind the stone walls of Willow House if that was what it took, but she didn't have that choice. She had learned something over the past two weeks that she hadn't realized before, that it wasn't walls which made a prison, nor the lack of them that made for happiness. To be happy, she needed people in her life to love.

She needed Peter and Alex. Only they weren't available. Not to her.

"I'm going away for a couple of weeks," she said, her words stunning her, the result, she was sure, of too many sleepless nights. But the relief coursing through her convinced her the idea was a good one.

"To Boston?" Ruby asked hopefully.

"No." Slowly a plan took shape in Jann's mind. "Back to Maui." She'd been happy there—the last place she had been happy. Perhaps in work, her loneliness would disappear. "There are some photos—"

Ruby groaned.

Jann bit her lip.

"Pictures are no substitute for a man, you know."

Jann stared down at the photo lying in her hand. Ruby was right, but if she couldn't have this particular man, she didn't want any.

"I know," she said determinedly, laying the picture on top of the rest, "but I have to start somewhere."

* * *

Jann's bike missed the hood of a yellow station wagon by a hair's breadth as she cut into the lane in front of it. Her left turn signal a mere blur of hand and arm, she shot down a side street then into the park. Faster and faster she pedaled, glad the sidewalk was empty, glad also for the speed. Not ever wanting to stop. For when she did, she would have to face what she had done.

Her feet slowed. She would have to face it sometime. It might as well be now.

She stopped at Claire's bench, her fingers slick with sweat as she loosed her hold on the handlebars and dropped her bike to the grass. Her body was hot, too, though not only from exertion. The bench's smooth wood was soothing—Jann swallowed hard—but not soothing enough.

With a sigh, she pulled the envelope of tickets from her bag and spread them across her knee.

Boston, it said on the top one. Honolulu to Boston.

Maui, she had told the travel agent, yet here she was on a park bench holding tickets that would carry her over an ocean and half a continent.

All flights to Maui were booked until Monday, the agent had informed her. Something to do with high season, or was it overbooking?

But she had needed to go now, before the memories locked in her heart drove her demented. Like a rat in a maze, unable to escape, she had turned away. Then with no direction from her brain, she had turned back again.

"Boston," she had mumbled hoarsely, touching the bare spot on her neck, missing the counsel and strength of her mother's crystal. "Do you have any seats going there?"

A clicking of the computer keys, a rapid printing of a page, and a ticket was in her hand.

With a soft moan, Jann stood, the adrenaline disappearing that had carried her this far. A chill prickled her arms and she shivered a body-aching sort of shiver. Then, as suddenly and unexpectedly as the sun erases shadows, a warm glow erased the chill.

A friendly glow. A friend's glow. A Claire kind of glow.

She spun around, half expecting to see Claire sitting on the bench behind her.

But there was no one. There was only an empty bench.

Yet the warmth was still there, surrounding her, comforting her. The same warmth Claire had always exuded, an approving kind of warmth, as though her friend was there, approving Jann's decision to allow Peter to take Alex, urging her also to follow them to Boston.

Peter didn't love her Jann longed to scream, even though she loved him with all her heart. How could she use this ticket if it was simply to cling to Alex? To be near Peter without his love would be unendurable.

Without knowing for sure how Peter felt: the glow seemed to answer, her life was already unendurable.

Grimacing toward the empty bench, Jann grabbed the handles of her abandoned bike and pulled it up and mounted it.

If she was going to go, and she suddenly knew that she was, she had to get home. There was so much to do: photos to develop, bilges to pump, instructions for John and Ruby as to which plants needed watering and to keep an eye on the battery levels...

She willed her whirling brain to a standstill. No sense fretting as though she'd be gone forever. It would take very little time to find out what she needed to know. Beyond that, she couldn't allow herself to think.

* * *

Even the cab drivers were different. No open-necked Hawaiian shirts or casual suggestions as to which beach had the best surfing. This Boston driver, despite the warm day, had his collar fully buttoned and wore a cotton jacket as well.

"A long way out of town," he had pronounced at the airport after glancing at the address Jann had scrawled on a piece of paper. "Might run to sixty dollars or more," he had added, casting a worried glance at her seen-better-days handbag.

Smiling with more firmness than she felt, Jann had handed him her knapsack and watched him put it in the trunk. And now she was here, the cab sputtering through the twin gates to Willow House like the last racer to the finish line.

Peter's home was nothing like the orphanage. One more thing she'd been wrong about. The stone wall around the property was crumbling in places, and ivy climbed over the top, just as Alex would climb when he was older.

And there were bushes flowering everywhere. Not the flamboyant, fragrant, Hawaiian flowers she loved so much, but others just as special. Azaleas and roses, clusters of impatiens, and forget-me-nots tucked in amongst the pansies lining the drive.

Gradually slowing as they neared the house, the cab shuddered to a halt in front of the steps. Jann climbed out, suddenly fearful to let the driver go.

"Wait for me," she said, stuffing her bag back into the cab's trunk then resolutely climbing the stone steps to the front door.

One stab of the doorbell brought no answer, but that was hardly surprising with a house this size. Wishing for the hundredth time that she'd sent a telegram to say she was coming, Jann pressed the bell again.

This time, the door opened.

"Yes?" said the woman who answered, smoothing a voluminous blue smock over her wide hips while a cloud of graying curls fluttered back from her face in the breeze.

"Is Peter Strickland at home?" Jann asked.

"Yes," the woman replied, opening the door a little wider. The cluster of silver bracelets encircling her wrist tinkled against each other. "He's in the back garden. Whom shall I say is calling?"

"A... a friend," Jann said, choking on the word. "I took care of his nephew in Hawaii." She had more than cared for him. She had loved him.

"Jann Fletcher," the woman exclaimed, a smile sweeping the polite caution off her face. "I should have known you from your picture." She held out her hand. "I'm Callie Reynolds, Alex's nanny."

Jann shaped her lips into a smile, her image of Alex's nanny as a cold, ordered woman dissolving. She'd been right to trust Peter. The sparkle in Callie's eyes and the smudge of flour on her cheek told Jann Alex's nanny was nothing like the dictatorial organizer of the orphanage in which she'd once lived.

"I'll take you right through." Callie's laugh lines bracketed her eyes as her smile broadened. "Alex will be so happy to see you."

"Has he been homesick?" Jann asked anxiously.

"Not a bit of it," the woman denied with a tinkling laugh. "He has settled in beautifully."

"That's great," Jann said, squelching a pang upon hearing he hadn't missed her.

"Follow me," Callie instructed, leading Jann down a beautifully proportioned hall, its warm wood paneling casting a glow on the glass fronts of the family portraits lining it.

Jann's face drained of heat. There on the wall, amongst past and present Stricklands, was the picture she had given Alex, the one of Claire holding her baby, her face filled with love.

The picture had been enlarged so that it was the same size as the others, and it looked so right sitting there, as though it belonged.

As she didn't belong.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Callie said, following the direction of Jann's stare. Her expression softened. "I was only twenty when I first came to Willow House to look after Miss Claire. It seems a long time ago now."

Not so long, Jann thought. And Peter had been right. Callie had loved Claire. As she would, no doubt, love Alex.

"That picture of you," Callie said, smiling at Jann, "is next to Alexander's bed. It's the first thing he sees when he wakes up in the morning."

Hope erupted in Jann's heart. Maybe Alex wouldn't forget her.

From somewhere in the house came the strident ringing of a phone.

"I'd better get that," Callie said, moving forward a few feet and opening a door on the right. "Mr. Strickland is expecting a call from overseas. Just keep going," she encouraged, "down the hall, through the sun room, and out the glass doors. You'll find them."

Finding her way was the easy part. Forcing her feet to actually move was much more difficult. With each step, Jann's worries multiplied as to what she would say when she finally faced Peter.

Stepping through the glass doors to the stone patio, Jann found an enormous rhododendron bush blocking her view of much of the garden. But in the far left corner, at the very edge of the lawn, was a willow tree, and beneath the tree was a bench.

With a man sitting on it, a folder of papers in one hand and a cup of something hot in the other. At his feet, sitting on the porpoise quilt she'd made, surrounded by his toys, sat Alex.

She took a blind step backward.

She'd been a fool to come, a fool to think that either Peter or Alex was missing her. Loving her.

They had everything they needed. They had each other.

She fought back the images reeling through her mind, of the touches she and Peter had shared, the warm looks, the passion. It was false emotion, false dreams. The only real thing between them had been the heat, and that, she'd been told, could come and go as quickly as a flame to a match.

She should be grateful for the heat and leave it at that. Peter may not have given her his love, but the heat had been something she hadn't managed before. Perhaps next time...

Her throat closed over.

There would be no next time. If she couldn't have Peter, she didn't want anyone else.

Turning, she stumbled back through the sliding windows. She had to escape, had to get away from this place.

"There you are, Miss Fletcher," Callie Reynolds said, entering the sun room and blocking Jann's way. "Couldn't you find them?" She peered over Jann's shoulder. "Peter," she called, taking hold of Jann's elbow with one hand and raising the other hand and waving. "You have a visitor."