Scarlet Butterfly (14 page)

“Of course not. There are no such things as ghosts.” Rogan’s voice held far more certainty than he felt.

He turned his attention to Carolina’s canvas, and was stunned. When he’d asked her to paint a portrait of the
Butterfly
, he had intended it as therapy. It had never occurred to him that she had such talent.

“The figurehead,” he said quietly. “How did you know? I mean I haven’t found it yet. But I knew there was one.”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” she said. “It was as if a voice came to me, describing the carving of a scarlet butterfly on the figurehead. Oh, Rogan, do you suppose it’s still in the water?”

“I don’t know. If it’s in the mud, we may never find it. If it wasn’t made from cypress it might not have survived. Wood worms or warm water could have destroyed it; the tide could have washed it out to sea. I don’t know.”

“But we could look, couldn’t we?”

“Carolina, we don’t even know that there
was
a butterfly, and we don’t know whether the figurehead was saved or left to decay. It could take a lifetime.”

Clasping Rogan’s arms with both of her small hands, Carolina spoke with authority. “Sean Rogan, even if you don’t believe in ghosts, I know that figurehead is in this lake, and we’re going to find it.”

“Look at the water, Carolina darling. Do you see the bottom?”

“Of course not. That water is as black as ink.”

“And just as hard to see through,” Rogan said, trying to quell the flicker of excitement that was already tugging at his equilibrium. He had enough to do. He wasn’t about to involve Carolina in a futile search for an object they might never find, even if she did actually believe the captain’s ghost had told her about the carving.

Of course there was no ghost. But there was no sign of any human anywhere he’d searched either. He’d lived on the
Butterfly
for almost nine months and he’d seen no sign of a spirit. Of course the ship groaned and creaked; that was to be expected. And now and then he’d had the feeling that somebody was watching him, but that, he told himself, had come from loneliness.

Ghosts didn’t take on human form. Ghosts couldn’t lift a woman and carry her. Ghosts didn’t smoke pipes or wear rough jackets. They didn’t gather peaches and leave them as gifts.

But at the moment he lacked a better explanation, and Sean Rogan didn’t like anything he couldn’t explain or control.

Now, with Carolina’s blue eyes sparkling with excitement and her lovely face peering up at him, he
forgot his earlier resolve not to touch her. He ached to touch her, to tell her that once he’d believed in dreams. And he ached for himself, because he knew how hard dreams die, and how all his plans to stay away from her until he could figure out a way to get her to Ida’s were vanishing.

“It might be a dream, Rogan, but can’t we try and make it real?”

There was no smile on Rogan’s face as he gazed down with a solemn expression. She wished he didn’t look so lost. She wished that he hadn’t been hurt so badly that he couldn’t join in a simple let’s-pretend kind of wish. He seemed so sure of himself, she thought, yet there were times, like now, when the vulnerability showed through.

Carolina stood on her toes, stretching to reach him. Her breasts skimmed his chest, throbbing beneath the T-shirt as she breathed. “I think that my coming here, fulfilling my dream, was somehow meant to be. Once I thought my life was over, but I lived. I think that you came out here not to be alone but because you’d lost your dreams. We were both looking for something. I wasn’t certain what it was until today, when suddenly I felt the comfort and peace the
Butterfly
offered. Oh, Rogan, it’s a sanctuary.”

Rogan released the breath he’d been holding. The sun leapt over the pines and its rays fell full across them, catching the gold in Carolina’s hair and showering her with ethereal light. He leaned closer, unable to stop himself any longer from touching the lips that begged for his kiss. And he said with his lips what he couldn’t say in words—that she was right
about dreams; that he’d left them all behind, until he’d found the
Butterfly
and her.

When Beth had died, he’d used his family’s squabbles as an excuse to turn away. He’d become a dried-out, emotionless man who’d lost tomorrow. Carolina was so bright and so confident. As his hand moved along the small of her back, it started again, that incredible need, a need for the kind of solace that he had no right to desire.

“Ah, Carrie,” he whispered, and shook his head. His lips curled into a tight smile but his eyes filled with regret. “I wish it were that easy, darling, but it isn’t. I think your imagination is promising you something false. Don’t plan on me, or this, or a future here. I should have taken you back. Keeping you here is selfish; it’s for me, and I know that. When you’re better, we’ll have to talk.”

Carolina felt an icy spear cut through her. She let her arms fall away from his neck. He was wrong. He didn’t understand. But he would—sooner or later. Meanwhile, she’d give him time to learn.

“Aye, aye, Captain. I’ll stop kissing you, if you insist. But I’m not going to stop thinking about it. I’ll just have to find something else to occupy my time. Right now, I’m going to work on my painting, while the feeling is still here. Maybe the captain will give me a hint about the figurehead.”

“Fine,” Rogan snapped, then forced himself to soften his words. “I have sanding to do and the new wood to seal and varnish.”

“First, food. You didn’t eat breakfast. I think I can manage a salad without a cookbook, if that’s all right.”

“Fine. I’ll make iced tea.”

This time they worked together, touching subtly and not so subtly. Carolina stole two quick kisses, giving promises of things to come with her eyes. After they’d eaten and cleared away the food, Carolina went back to her picture and Rogan to the sanding and polishing of the wood he’d used to repair the hole. He’d thought at the time that the hole had been chopped clumsily in the deck, but he’d pushed the thought aside. Now as he worked he allowed his mind to consider the possibility that Captain Jacob had deliberately scuttled his ship here, in a pond near where he’d later built his home.

Why? Carolina’s journal seemed to suggest flight, fear on her part. And Jacob? Had he been a willing participant, or some kind of pawn? As he worked Sean found himself glancing at Carolina. He liked her serious expression, her shapely legs folded Indian style beneath her as she leaned forward intently, then back as she considered her strokes.

The afternoon set the pattern for the next few days. With Bully’s cage outside on deck, Sean would work on repairing the ship and she’d paint. And they learned that there was more to their being together than making love.

Occasionally she gave him a quick side glance and a smile, as if she knew a secret and planned to tease him until she was ready to reveal it. They talked about books and movies. She found that Rogan was a Groucho Marx fan. She confided that, because the doctors thought laughter promoted healing, she’d spent hours watching the Three Stooges while she’d been housebound.

And little by little, Rogan began to laugh. She
exchanged her soft T-shirt for a bathing suit, and her skin began taking on the color of warm honey.

One afternoon she voiced the question she’d deliberately withheld. “Rogan, tell me about your family.”

“You don’t want to hear that. It might spoil your creativity.”

“I want to know everything about you. And I want you to know about me.”

“That isn’t a good idea.” But he found he wanted to know about this woman who was changing before his eyes. With a brush in her hand, she seemed to gather life from the river and the
Butterfly
. Her eyes were softer, bluer, and she seemed more content.

“All right, but you first, Carrie.”

This time when the deck creaked, Rogan was expecting it. He’d come to associate that response with the name Carrie.

“My life isn’t very exciting. My father, as you already know, is an attorney, very wealthy and very powerful. Part of his money came from his father and the rest he’s made representing people who pay him great sums to make their lives easier. He’s brilliant, and he’s determined.”

“Sounds pretty tough. What about your mother?”

“My mother wasn’t a well woman. She might have loved my father once, but I only remember her trying desperately to pretend that she was strong when she wasn’t. She refused to take care of herself, staying out late at night, drinking too much, smoking too much, and I suspect taking too many prescription drugs. Again and again she’d leave.”

“If she was so unhappy, why didn’t he let her go?”

“My father doesn’t know how to lose anything: a case, a wife, a daughter.”

“But he did,” Rogan corrected. “He eventually lost your mother, and he’s lost you.”

“Yes, but I didn’t have to die to get away.”

That stopped Rogan for a minute. He wondered if she might have come closer to dying than she’d admitted.

“I’m sorry. Your father must be a very lonely man.”

Carolina transferred a sketch to her canvas. She gave a look of satisfied approval and turned to the tubes of oils, selecting a brush and squeezing dabs of color onto the palette.

“I never thought much about it, but maybe you’re right. He thinks that anything he wants, he’ll get, and if there’s a problem, he’ll find an answer. He was always good to me, but he just wouldn’t listen.”

“I can understand that. There was a time I was accused of the same thing.”

Carolina turned in mock surprise. “You wouldn’t listen? I don’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” he said, ignoring her affectionate sarcasm. “I was head of a family business that included two television stations, two newspapers, the largest pecan orchard and candy business in the South, and a chain of resorts in the Caribbean. There was nothing I couldn’t do, or arrange, or fix—except the genetic flaws in the family I loved, the family that was killing itself with jealousy.”

“I met your brother,” Carolina said. “I didn’t know he was your brother at the time—he didn’t bother to introduce himself. But later Ida told me. Funny, I got the idea that he cared about you. He refused to tell me where you were.”

“He knew I’d kill him if he did. Keeping reporters
away from me was part of my … retirement agreement.”

“But once you started raising the schooner everybody in St. Marys would have known.”

“Yes. I thought that I could buy silence. I was wrong.”

Carolina laid down her brush and turned to watch Rogan. He’d finished applying the protective coating to his work and was staring out at the river as though he were somewhere else entirely. This time only Rogan filled her sight. Often when she looked at him she’d see Rogan, then somewhere in the background she’d catch a glimpse of another shape, another presence that looked the same yet wasn’t.

Jacob. She didn’t question it anymore. His presence wasn’t threatening. Rather, he brought comfort and a kind of security. She felt as if he were looking after them.

“I see. Other than your brother, the newspaper editor, who else makes up the Rogan family?”

Suddenly he was telling her about the two older sisters who’d decided they wanted a voice in the corporation, and, on being given seats on the board of directors, had taken the advice of husbands and boyfriends, causing such discord that it was all Sean could do to keep the business from disintegrating. He might still have kept things going if his mother hadn’t remarried and demanded the right to vote her stock.

“And there is my youngest brother, Ryan. He didn’t start out to be a doctor. He thought he was cool. He and my youngest sister were caught up in another life-style, another time. Ryan didn’t care
about the family, he only cared about—well, it doesn’t matter.”

It all came back to Rogan. Rescuing Ryan and Beth from one problem after another. The publicity, the lawsuits, the harsh words and hurt that could never be undone. Then Beth had died and Ryan had changed. But by that time it had been too late; the family had been shattered. When the downswing in the economy came along, Rogan couldn’t keep the company afloat. His sisters and older brother voted to dissolve the company and sell off its holdings. Ryan didn’t care enough to vote. Rogan knew that he was licked.

He could have fought them. He might have won. Instead, Rogan resigned as CEO. The holdings and the cash were divided up, with the sisters receiving a television station and a resort. The pecan orchard and candy business went to his mother and the newspaper to his brother David. Ryan got a house in St. Marys and Rogan took the old family estate on the river.

“Oh, Rogan, I’m so sorry.” She cleaned her brush, put away the paint, and came over to sit beside the man who’d been so terribly hurt by those he loved.

“Don’t be. I got over it a long time ago.”

But he hadn’t. She sensed that he was still hurting, just as she was. Love should be healing, but sometimes it brought only pain. Carolina leaned her head on his shoulder and was rewarded by his arm sliding around her, this time in gentle sharing, in acceptance.

For a long time they sat, her presence giving him comfort. Then, Carolina felt Rogan tense, as if he realized what he was doing. He was pulling away.
She came to her feet, scaled the railing at the edge of the ship, and dove smartly into the water.

Rogan watched in amazement as she flipped over on her back and floated like some exotic gold-and-green fish. Then she turned and swam toward shore. As she reached the shallow water, she suddenly froze where she was standing and let out a scream.

In a second he was over the side. When he reached her she had an expression of utter dismay on her face.

“What’s wrong, Carrie?”

“Yuck! Mud. I hate it squishing through my toes.” She flung herself against him, hanging around his neck, her legs curving around his hips. “I like this much better. Take me to the house, Rogan. You said you would. I want to see where Jacob lived.”

“Carolina, you aren’t dressed for the woods. There is a trail, but it isn’t totally clear.”

“You’ll take care of me, Rogan. I know you will.”

And as he read the trust in her eyes, he knew that he had no choice. He never had.