Bundle of Joy (38 page)

The blond woman rustled in her seat. He glanced over at her and found himself fascinated by the dignity of her chiseled profile, the elegant curve of her long neck, the way her hands rested quietly on her lap.

A man Joe recognized as one of Anna's friends from the days when her husband was alive stepped up to the lectern.

"Anna Kennedy lived the way a human being should live," the man began, his voice rough with emotion but steady. "She embraced every day—every second—of her long life as if it were the most precious of gifts, and more importantly, she managed to share her zest for life with many of you who have come today to honor her."

Across the aisle a woman began to cry softly.

"Sorrow wasn't in Anna's vocabulary," the man continued. "She loved life too much, and she simply had too much love to give to the writers and artists who came to Lakeland House in droves."

Tears he hadn't shed since his father's death made his eyes sting, and he blinked rapidly to clear them.

"And so we're not here today to sing sad songs or weep for Anna Kennedy's death. No. We're here to celebrate her life."

Joe was about to lose it when the incredible, vibrant sounds of the last section of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture blasted forth from the loudspeakers as the mourners began to file out of the church.

He thought of Anna, whose idea of quiet dinner music had been this rousing theme meant to lead men into battle, not bouillabaisse. He pictured her at the long dinner table, conducting the crescendo with her sterling-silver salad fork. He'd be damned if he'd mourn her with weeping and sorrow He glanced at the woman next to him, and a crazy smile spread across his face.

The woman smiled back at him, her face even lovelier than he'd first thought.

"Anna would've loved this," she said.

She reached over and took his hand. Her bones were finer, more fragile than he had expected, the skin soft and delicate. And so he sat there until it was their turn to leave, thinking of Anna and trying not to think of the way this woman's hand felt in his.

#

The gravesite ceremony was brief and unbearably poignant. Meg found herself looking at the trees ablaze in fall colors, glancing toward the White Mountains in the distance, concentrating on the rugged face of the man next to her—anything but the reason that had brought her to that place.

When it was over, she left to walk the quarter mile back to the church where she'd left her car. The dark-haired man walked with her. She had yet to ask his name; the moment for introduction hadn't presented itself. She liked the way he seemed to understand the value of silence, and she also liked the way he took her hand in his own large one and fell into step with her. She also liked the strong, angular bones of his face, the hawk-like nose and the beautifully made mouth below. His skin was light olive with high color around they cheeks, just the slightest hint of dark beard showed. If she had had her camera with her right then, she would have posed him in a thick tangle of woods with a thin shaft of sunlight backlighting his face. He must have felt her eyes on him, for he looked at her, a steady measuring look, then gave her hand a slight squeeze.

She was grateful to have that human hand to hold on to and she suspected he was just as grateful. Such a shame, she thought, noting the way the sun brought out the green of his eyes and the shiny black of his straight, shaggy hair. Such a shame that they would part company in a few minutes and this unexpected feeling of warmth and kinship would disappear with no more than a brief goodbye. But this wasn't exactly a social occasion and she was sure he had a life of his own to return to, a life bounded east and west with wife and children.

"Are you going to brunch at the house?" he asked as they neared the church.

Meg thought of the clusters of mourners who would be there—wealthy people in furs mingling with perennially starving artists—and shook her head. "Lakeland House without Anna? I don't think so." She looked at him. "What about you?"

"I'm the one who couldn't make it into the church."

"You went in," she said.

"Only because you did."

Suddenly she became hyper-aware of the intimacy of what they'd shared, and she pulled away, plunging both hands into the pockets of her coat. She was about to ask him if he needed a ride to his hotel when a tall, slim, graying man approached them.

"Well, if it's not the luck of the Irish at work." His voice was deep and musical, touched with a trace of brogue. "And how grand is it to find you two together like this?"

Meg glanced at the dark-haired man next to her, who shrugged his shoulders.

"I see my smiling face means nothing to you fine people," the older man said easily. "I'm Patrick McCallum, Anna's attorney, and you're Joseph Alessio and Margarita Lindstrom." They said nothing. McCallum looked from one to the other and his smile widened. "You can't deny it," he said, pulling two photos from his inside breast pocket and extending them toward Meg and Joe. "You both might be a little older, but time hasn't done any damage at all."

Meg barely recognized the face looking up at her from the grainy black-and-white photo. It wasn't that she had been that much younger—five years made little difference—but the look in her eyes was one of such innocence, such enthusiasm, that she turned away and reached for the other picture.

"This is you?" she asked, looking from the flat, one-dimensional image to the living, breathing original next to her."You look so. . . so—"

"Angry." Joe snatched the picture from her, glanced at it, then handed it back. "I was." He pulled another cigarette from his coat pocket. "Very angry."

It wasn't a professional shot. No pro would ever have allowed his strong-boned face to disappear into shadow and yet the anger in his eyes still singed her fingers as she held the picture. He was thinner in the photo, less muscular, his denim work shirt open at the neck. Nestled in the thick chest hair was a medal of some kind, and below that dog tags. His black hair was long; its straight strands covered his brow and brushed below the collar of his shirt. Most of his face was hidden by a beard and moustache that lacked the lushness of maturity.

He was sitting on a window seat, lighted cigarette in two fingers of his left hand, which rested on his right knee. His eyes, a brilliant deep green in reality, seemed dark and mysterious in the photo. Through the bay window behind him, Meg could just make out the figures of people playing with a Frisbee in Anna's Lakeland House backyard.

"I know that room," she said, handing Joe the photo. "That was where the dancers practiced."

Joe passed the photo to McCallum, who was quietly observing the two of them. "When I was at Lakeland, there were no dancers."

"I thought Anna catered to all the arts," Meg said. "When I was there, she—"

"Mrs. Kennedy opened her doors to dancers three years after Joe's stay," Patrick McCallum broke in, sliding the two snapshots into his coat pocket. "Which is a good five years before you arrived."

Meg turned to Joe and quickly assessed him.

"I'm not as young as you thought," Joe said with a quick grin.

"I thought you were around my age."

"Which is?"

"Twenty-six years and three months," McCallum volunteered. "Margarita was born July sixth and you, Joseph, were born July seventh—a difference of seven years and one day."

Next to her, Joe bristled. "How the hell do you know so much about us?"

McCallum's face, lined and friendly as a basset hound, lit up. "I was Anna's lawyer and I know everything about the people she cared most for."

"I'm flattered," Meg said, "but I don't really see why it—"

"Matters," Joe broke in.

McCallum's sigh was long and low. "I hadn't wanted to bring this up until we got to Lakeland House."

"We weren't planning to go back to the house," Meg said.

McCallum stepped between them and draped an arm around each one of them. "Oh no, no, no, my dear people. That can't be."

"The hell it can't," Joe said, temper clearly getting the better of him. "I'm driving back to Princeton tonight."

The intense young man in the photo sprang to life in front of Meg. She was fascinated but poor McCallum seemed cowed.

"We just said goodbye to someone we loved. It's been a shitty morning and I don't think either I or-" He fumbled for her name.

"Meg," she said.

His look was one of thanks and apology. "I don't think either Meg or I want to be strong-armed into—"

"Strong-armed?" McCallum released Meg so quickly it was like she'd caught fire. "Strong-armed, is it?" His pale blue eyes were filled with concern. "Good God, but it has been a difficult morning, hasn't it?" He rubbed his square chin absently. "Didn't I make it clear? You, Joseph, and you, Margarita, are both requested to be present."

"Requested by whom?" Joe still sounded wary.

"By Anna."

"I beg your pardon?" Meg's voice rose an octave.

"I spoke with Anna a few hours before she died," McCallum explained. "She said the will cannot be read except in your presence." He favored them with another smile. "Your presences."

"This is the first I've heard of anything like this," Meg said as an uncomfortable fluttering began in the pit of her stomach. "You'd think Anna would've mentioned it."

Joe shook his head. "Not the Anna I knew. She delighted in surprises."

"Now you get the idea." McCallum, satisfied that he was finally understood, draped his arms over their shoulders once again and propelled Meg and Joe back toward the church and the waiting cars. "This is going to be a very interesting afternoon all around."

~~end of excerpt~~

Second Harmony – a contemporary romance

The storm brought them together . . .

But will love tear them apart?

He was the bad boy with the raging heart

She was the good girl with the big dreams

Now he is a master stonecutter with a broken marriage and a son he would move heaven and earth to keep safe from harm, while she is a success at everything she touches . . . everything except love

And then, seven years after they said goodbye forever, fate finally found a way to bring them back together and give them one last chance to get it right.

~~Chapter One~~

With the back of her hand, Mother Nature had managed to obliterate most of the signs of modern civilization and send Long Island plummeting back into the darkness of another time.

On Harvest Drive, a twisting, hilly road off the Sound near Port Jefferson, residents peeked out their windows into the gathering darkness and wondered how they would be able to hack their way through the tangle of fallen trees and collapsed roofs the next morning.

While a lot of Long Islanders professed a love of the great outdoors, most liked it best when the great outdoors gently splashed against their twenty-five-foot sailboats or rustled the wind chimes hanging over their redwood decks.

Hurricane Henry was Mother Nature's way of thumbing her nose at progress and reminding everyone exactly who was in charge here.

Five neighbors, all men, labored at the far end of Harvest Drive, trying to make the roadway passable. The night air was alive with the sound of wood splitting beneath an ax, the brittle crunch of leaves underfoot and the mumbled curses and shouted directions of the men who worked by the light of a kerosene lamp and the high beams of a Jeep.

Four of the men were out there because it was expected of them, and because they were men of accomplishment who believed in always meeting the expectations of others.

The fifth man didn't give a damn about what others expected. He was there because storms were his natural element, the raw beauty of untamed nature, his food and drink. He was bigger than the other men—taller and more powerfully made – but it wasn't his size that marked him as a leader. Rather, it was something indefinable, a sense of power, of certainty, that made others give way.

"Hey, McKay!" The voice belonged to an attorney whose list of triumphs could have filled the Manhattan Yellow Pages. "Enough already. Haven't you noticed it's dark out?"

Michael McKay raised the axe overhead one more time and brought it slicing down on the trunk of a once-beautiful oak tree.

"It's been dark for almost an hour," he called out, as he wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand. "If I get this one out, we'll at least have one lane open."

Jim Flannery, the attorney, took the opportunity to grab the axe away from Michael. "Forget it, pal. You're swinging blind, and I don't think Bernstein over there is in the mood to do any microsurgery tonight."

Michael adjusted the beam of the kerosene lamp on the ground near them. "I'm not a desk jockey like you, Flannery. Hard work doesn't scare me."

Flannery turned to Sid Bernstein, the surgeon. "I think he just insulted us, Bernie. What do you think?"

Bernstein feinted a quick right jab toward Michael's jaw. The other men – a psychologist and an engineer – joined in the good-natured ribbing.