Her Special Charm (16 page)

He supposed his narrative had left some gaping holes. He tried to fill them in quickly. Later he'd give her more details, but for now, he just wanted to get on with his story. And reach his conclusion.

“I'd left home, worked my way cross country and was living in doorways. Eli and his wife owned this little mom-and-pop grocery store on the Lower East Side. I was in it for the first time one night, contemplating robbing him when someone beat me to it. The guy had a gun and he was threatening to shoot Eli's wife. I was around the corner and nobody saw me,” he explained. He loved the way she listened, as if every inch of her were intent on finding out what he had to say. “I don't even remember thinking about it, I just jumped the guy. Eli said I'd saved their lives. But he and his wife gave me a place to stay and sent me to school. So I guess they pretty much saved my life.” He was convinced of that. “And now you've joined the club.”

She blinked. It was some leap from there to here. “I have?”

It was going to be all right, he told himself. Somehow, he was going to make this right if it wasn't at this very moment. He took her into his arms. And realized just how acutely he'd missed the feel of having her against him.

“Yeah, because being with you kept me from just giving way to despair. You added colors into my life, Constance. Blues and reds, yellows and pinks.”

Her eyes crinkled. She hooked her arms around him. “You don't strike me as a pink kind of guy.”

“Not on its own, but in concert with the other colors…” He realized that she'd taken him off course. Again. She had a way of making him forget everything else except her. “The point is, you make me feel alive. You make me want to stay alive. It didn't much matter before.”

She could feel her heart swelling with happiness. But she needed more. She needed to hear every single word he had to spare. “And it does now?”

He inclined his head. “It does as long as I can stay alive around you.”

“I highly recommend it,” she told him with enthusiasm, then made a face. “Keeping dead people around is kind of creepy.”

He laughed and shook his head. Life with her was never going to be dull. But she had to be made aware of something before he went any further. Before he allowed himself to believe it was all going to be good. That was a trap too many people fell into. Not being prepared.

“You know, what I said the other day's still true. I
don't
know how to make a relationship work.”

She took his face between her hands and lightly kissed him on the mouth. Sweetness spiraled right through him, boring down to his very core.

“That's because it's not a one-man job. It's like a seesaw,” she explained. “One person can't make it work properly. It takes two to make it work right. And I'm more than willing to take my place on the other end of the seesaw.”

Humor quirked his mouth. “I thought you said relationships were like snowflakes.”

She waved her hand, dismissing what he presented as a discrepancy. “That was before. This is now. Keep up.”

“I'll try, Constance, I surely will try.” He toyed with her hair, then let the strand drop. The side of her neck, just above the cameo's black velvet ribbon, presented a very tempting target. He could almost taste her skin. “I'd like to think I have forever to do it, though.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked startled. Was he wrong after all? Was this just temporary to her? No strings, no rules? “That didn't come out right, did it?”

She knew better than to shoot him down. “That depends on what you're trying to say.”

Okay, this one was for all the marbles, he thought. All or nothing. He didn't know how to play any other way. “I'm trying to say I love you and I want you to marry me, Constance.”

It took her a moment. She had to drag the air back into her lungs again. “I think you just said it.”

He looked at her, waiting. “Aren't you supposed to say something here?”

Her expression was innocent. “You mean like I love you and I want to marry you, too?”

He nodded, trying not to let her see how he was hanging out on a limb until she gave him the answer he needed. “That sounds about right.” He paused. She was doing this to him on purpose. “Well, do you?”

Rather than answer, she made an observation. “Always the interrogator.”

“Can't help it.” If she was going to say no, he decided, she would have done so by now. She was just stretching this out to get even with him. “It's my police training.”

“For the record, Detective, I love and want to marry you, too.” She threaded her arms around his neck, bringing her body in to his. “We'd better get started on your husband training then.” She grinned at him. “Lesson one, always follow up proposals with a kiss.”

He pretended to think before answering. “I can do that.”

“You'd better,” she laughed. “Or I'll have to trade you in.”

He ran his finger over the oval at her throat. “Sorry, only one hit from the cameo per customer.”

Amusement danced in her eyes. “Since when did you become such an expert on my family heirloom?”

“Not an expert, exactly. I just write some of the rules as I go along.”

She raised her eyes to his expectantly. “About lesson one…”

He pulled her to him, feeling very nuance, every curve. And telling himself that from here on in, his life was finally going to take a turn for the better. Because she was going to be in it.

He blessed the day he found that cameo. Or rather, the woman he'd stumbled over who'd found the cameo. “Coming up.”

As he began to lower his mouth to hers, an image registered on his brain and he stopped just short of kissing her.

“Change your mind?” she asked.

“Constance, who's that?” He pointed to the portrait of an older woman she had hanging on the far wall. He'd never noticed it before.

Turning, Constance glanced to where James was pointing. “Oh, that's Amanda Deveaux. The original owner of the cameo. It was done a few years before she died.” Puzzled, she looked at him curiously. “Why this sudden interest?”

To his trained eye, that the woman in the portrait was a dead ringer for the old woman he'd run into the morning the cameo had come into his life.

But to his logical mind, he knew it was impossible.

As impossible as finding someone to love when he wasn't looking.

He realized this was how a believer was born. But all that was for another time. He had something better to do with his lips right now than tell tales.

“No reason,” he told her. “Just getting to know the family.”

Before she could ask anything more, he kissed her. And everything else faded away.

May 2, 1867

“A
manda, it's not safe for you here,” Savannah O'Brien stated for what seemed like the tenth time. “Come move into town with us. Mother already has. Frasier and I have more than enough room now that he's added on the extra floor.” She smiled at her sister, knowing how much Amanda doted on the two-year-old. “You can help me take care of Patrick.”

Amanda sensed her safety was not the only reason behind her sister's offer. Belinda Deveaux had become more and more difficult since her husband's death. “And Mother.”

Savannah inclined her head, conceding the point. “And Mother.” Amanda had always been more clever than her. But that did not change the fact that she was worried about Amanda, living here alone with only the help to turn to.

Amanda rose from her seat, restless. The porch creaked beneath her feet. They'd had these talks before. “Thank you, but no. My place is here.”

“Here?” Savannah cried incredulously. “Amanda, the plantation is crumbling. You have no one to work the fields.”

She took offense for the loyal souls who stuck by her when they did not have to. “I have Old Jacob, and Simon and Tess and their children.”

“Seven people. And they could leave at any time. Or die.” Crossing to her, Savannah placed her gloved hands on her sister's thin arms. She wasn't eating enough, Savannah thought. “Amanda, please. I know why you're staying, but he's not coming.” Forcing Amanda to look at her, she repeated, “Will's not coming back. The war's been over for almost two years now. If he were alive, he'd already be here.” Amanda pulled away from her. “Darling, it breaks my heart to see you like this.”

“He promised me, Savannah. Will promised he'd come back.”

“I know, and he would have kept his promise if he could, but Amanda, we lost a lot of good men in that awful war. You have to move on. Please.”

But Amanda shook her head. “No, little sister, I have
to wait. I gave him my word.” She drew herself up within her shabby dress, as regal as a queen. Hooking her arm through Savannah's, she led her sister from the porch to the wagon that stood waiting to bring her back into town. “I thank you for your offer and your concern, but I am fine.” She helped Savannah into the wagon, then handed her the reins. “Say hello to Mother for me.”

There was nothing left to do but leave. Savannah shook her head and sighed. “You know where to find us if you change your mind.”

Yes, Amanda thought as she watched the wagon pull away, she knew where to find her sister. And her nephew and her mother.

But it was Will she wanted to know where to find.

Amanda ran her hands along her arms. The air was getting chilly. Evening was coming.

Heartsick, not knowing what to do with herself, she went down to the road that she watched so anxiously each day.

“Oh, Will,” she whispered to the emptiness that surrounded her, “please come home. I am so weary, so very weary of trying to hold on.”

She had valiantly held on to her hope even as her mother had tried to browbeat her into marrying Frasier, telling her that he was far more interested in her than he was in her sister. Each day she'd had to endure her mother's recriminations and taunting. It was her love for Will that had sustained her.

But now, she was losing her grasp. Was he never coming home? Was she a fool to hope?

She stood at the fence, the way she did each evening, no matter what the weather, and willed him to appear.

“Please, please, please come back to me.”

She stared intently, praying, repeating the words over and over again.

But there was nothing, just the way there had been yesterday, and the day before that and the day before that. The road remained empty.

“Miss Amanda, come back inside, it's starting to rain.” She didn't have to turn around to see who it was. Old Jacob had come looking for her. Old Jacob had been her father's body servant. And now he cleaved to her. He was scolding her the way he had when she was very young and willful. “Maybe Mr. Will will be here tomorrow.”

She smiled at the old man, grateful for his part in the game she played with herself.

“Maybe,” she agreed. And then she saw Old Jacob squinting at something over her shoulder. Her heart scrambled up to her throat. “What is it?”

Old Jacob was far taller than she was. Did he see something that she couldn't?

Someone?

“Oh mah lawd.” Shocked, the old man's eyes opened so wide they looked as if they would fall out of his very head.

“What, what do you see?” she cried anxiously. Even
as she asked, she swung around and began running down the empty road. The mists were turning into rain. She didn't care.

“Miss Amanda, no.”

There were marauders on the road. Carpetbaggers and drifters who robbed those who had next to nothing to call their own. But she didn't think about that. She only thought about Will. It had to be Will. It
had
to be.

And then she saw him.

A lone, bearded figure half staggering, half walking, coming down the road.

He was barely more than a shadow. A shadow in a tattered Confederate uniform.

Her heart recognized what her mind was still trying to comprehend.

A cry tore loose from her throat. “Will!”

At the sound of his name, the man's head rose. His dazed eyes sharpened. Disbelief slowly took possession of his features, as if he could not believe that he had finally come to journey's end after all these many endless days of walking.

“Oh my God, Will!” Catching her skirt up in her hands, she raced toward him, half-afraid that she was hallucinating.

But Old Jacob had seen him, too, so this could
not
be just a figment of her imagination. Will had to be real. Dear God, he was real.

Reaching him, Amanda threw her arms around Will.
He felt so thin, so weak. Surprise and dismay echoed in her voice as he sagged against her.

“Jacob,” she called out to the man in the background, “bring water. I need water. And bread!”

The old man needed no more. He hurried to the house to bring back what she required.

She could feel her heart swelling. From joy. From concern. “You came back to me,” she cried.

He needed to touch her, to run his blistered, scarred fingers along her soft skin and assure himself that he wasn't having another one of his dreams.

“They left me for dead, Amanda. At Gettysburg, they left me for dead. But all I could think about was getting back to you. You brought me back from the grave, Amanda. You were all I could think about. I'm sorry it took me so long.”

She could hardly see for the tears. They spilled freely down her face. She didn't bother brushing them away. Both her hands were needed to hold him up. “All that matters is that you're here.”

He took a deep breath, trying to gather strength from somewhere. Will focused on her neck. “You still have the cameo.”

“I never took it off. I was afraid if I did, something would happen to you.”

He straightened as best he could and took the woman he loved more than life into his arms. Trying not to sag against her. “You kept me safe, Amanda. Your love kept me safe.”

“Love kept us both safe,” she whispered. And then she kissed him the way she'd been waiting almost six years to do.

Everything else melted away when she did.