Autumn Dreams (6 page)

“Sorry,” Cass muttered, rocking back on her heels. She made to step around him. In the background she heard Jenn’s horrified voice. “Aunt Cassandra, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I didn’t!”

He steadied her with a hand on her elbow as they both ignored Jenn. “Are you okay? I’m not a very soft wall.”

She couldn’t make herself look at him. How long had he been standing there? What had he heard? Her face burned. She had broken one of her cardinal rules of innkeeping: Never have a private conversation in a public area. Vacationers did not want to get involved with the host family’s problems when they were trying to escape their own.

“I’m fine,” she whispered to his third shirt button. “Excuse me.”

And she ran like the dried-up old maid that she was.

J
ENN SAT ON
the porch swing with her heels tucked against her bottom, her thighs pulled to her chest. She rested her head on her knees and tried desperately to forget the past few minutes.

She had never felt so ugly.

She blinked back tears of self-loathing. What was the point of working so hard every morning to make herself look good, to make certain her hair was just right, her makeup perfect, her outfit the latest, her nails just so, when inside she was vile and just plain nasty?

Derrick hated her.

Aunt Cassandra hated her.

That new guest guy hated her.

And she couldn’t blame them. At this moment she hated herself.

She saw the looks on each of their faces as clearly as if she were still with them. Derrick’s angry, accusing face. Aunt Cassandra’s hurt, sad face. The new guest guy’s look of disbelief and disdain.

She wasn’t certain which one hurt most. Well, not the guest guy because she didn’t know him. Still, she cringed when she remembered his unspoken condemnation. He’d turned and looked after Aunt Cassandra when she ran away, clearly concerned over her distress. Then he looked back at her. He hadn’t said a word—like, what right did he have anyway? But he consigned
her to some lowly immature adolescent worm status.

A worm. That’s what she was, a worthless, crawl-on-your-belly worm. She sighed and fought the tears. Her throat ached from the effort.

Derrick had stalked up to her in the hall first thing that morning and said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “What’s the matter with you, girl?”

She smiled at him. “Nothing, now that you’re here.”

He sneered. “Don’t get all cute with me!”

For the first time she realized he wasn’t looking at her with that approving light in his eyes. Rather, the sparks flying from his gaze meant anger, and she flinched. She also became aware that all the chatter and rush that usually filled the hall had gone silent. It was like one big held breath as everyone waited to hear what came next.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

“Like you don’t know.”

“I don’t.” She felt desperate.

“Then you’re dumber than I thought.”

As everyone snickered, she stared over his shoulder at the clock on the wall because she couldn’t bear the scorn on his face.

“You told your aunt, and she called my mom!”

A collective gasp rang from the attentive audience.

Jenn blanched. “I didn’t realize it was a secret.”

“Does anyone,” he shouted to their audience, “have a copy of
Life Skills for Dummies?
Jenn needs a copy big-time.”

Her visions of enduring love crashed about her feet like a building imploding, and she thought she would choke to death on the clouds of dusty pain swirling about her.

Oh, Aunt Cassandra, how could you?

“Party, Derrick?” he said in a falsetto voice Jenn could only assume was an imitation of his mother. “You were going to have a party while we were gone? Didn’t we tell you no party? Didn’t we? And just what kind of party, Derrick? Booze? Girls? Drugs? Well, just forget it, Derrick.”

How, Jenn wondered, could you feel the heat of mortification and the chill of rejection at the same time?

He—and everyone else in the hallway—glared at her.
“Needless to say, no one at my house is going anywhere this weekend, including me.”

Her eyes flew to him. “You’re grounded? But you didn’t do anything yet.”

His sneer reappeared, and she cringed. Sally Jameson tittered, and Derrick sent her an approving glance.

“I’m sorry, Derrick,” Jenn whispered. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

But he was gone, walking down the hall with the blond and bouncy Sally.

Suddenly the hall was alive with mocking laughter, with girls whispering behind their hands, with guys mentally crossing her off their lists. She would certainly have died of mortification if Jared hadn’t grabbed her elbow and led her down the hall.

“Don’t let them know you’re upset,” he said, his face impassive. “That’s what Coach always tells us. ‘Don’t let the other team know you’re vulnerable.’ Or ‘Don’t let them know you don’t know what to do. If you act like you’re fine, they’ll believe you are.’ ”

Puh-lease. A football pep talk?
She swallowed again and yet again to keep a sob from erupting.
Just what I need
.

But she had been so glad for Jared’s support. Not every brother would be willing to help a worm in need. He walked her to her first class and sent nutty Paulie to walk her to her second one. After that she was on her own. Never had the school day seemed so long.

Tonight wasn’t going much better. She dropped a foot to the porch floor and gave the swing a push. She grabbed one of the pillows Aunt Cassandra heaped on the swing and hugged it to her stomach.

It was all her parents’ fault. If they were here, all these problems never would have happened. Saudi Arabia! For a year!

When her father first told her about the transfer, she’d been uncertain about living in a foreign country, especially one as strange as Saudi Arabia. Why couldn’t Dad get assigned to someplace like England? At least she could speak the language, and William and Harry were so cute. Maybe she could even meet them if the family went to live there.

But Saudi Arabia? Who wanted to meet some prince in a head scarf? What if he wanted to stuff her in some harem? Didn’t they
marry daughters off young over there?

Dad had smiled benignly, interrupting her thoughts. “But we’ve decided that it isn’t safe to take you kids along, considering today’s political environment.”

“What?” She couldn’t believe her ears. Not take her and Jared along? Abandon them? Without even talking to them about it? And who cared about today’s political environment anyway?

Her mother—the mother who always stood up for her and let her get away with pure, unadulterated murder—smiled sweetly. “We know you’d rather stay here in Seaside.”

No! No, I wouldn’t
, she thought, even though Saudi Arabia scared her.
Families live together
.

“I want to go with you.” She looked at Jared who sat slouched on the sofa, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “Don’t you want to go too?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s my senior year coming up. I’d hate to miss it.”

“So be a senior the following year. Or you could homeschool.” She turned desperate eyes to her parents. “Even better, I bet they have schools in Saudi Arabia, don’t they? I mean ones that teach in English? Jared could take his senior year there.”

Her parents started shaking their heads before she even finished speaking. Jared shook his head too. “They don’t play football in Saudi Arabia.”

What was it with boys and football? “So play soccer or whatever it is they play over there.”

Jared just looked at her, and she knew a traitor when she saw one.

She pleaded, begged, and cajoled, but her parents’ minds were made up. They were going away and leaving her behind for a whole year. “What do Jared and I do?” she finally asked in a defeated tone.

At first the idea of living with Aunt Cassandra had sounded cool. She loved to visit SeaSong, and whenever she stayed the night, Aunt Cassandra treated her like one of her special guests. She served her the same gourmet breakfasts, put the same chocolates on her pillow each night, and gave her the blue bedroom decorated like a girl’s fairy tale bedroom. In short, Aunt Cassandra made her feel like a princess.

Well, that was then; this was now. She pushed the swing again. Now she was expected to work for her keep.

“Help Brenna with those beds, Jenn, please.”

“Table five needs some more coffee, Jenn. Remember to smile, please.”

“Pull the towels out of the dryer and fold them before they wrinkle, please, Jenn.”

Like saying
please
made the orders palatable.

Mom might have run off with Dad for a year, but one thing about Mom: She never asked Jenn to do housework. That’s what the cleaning lady was for.

But at SeaSong, Aunt Cassandra treated Jenn like
she
was the cleaning lady. One day she even made Jenn clean toilets!
Toilets!
Why the woman even bothered to hire Brenna when she had Jenn to kick around was one of life’s mysteries.

A car pulled up at the curb, breaking into Jenn’s sad thoughts. A man and a woman climbed out, and Jenn turned her head away.

“Oh, John, look!” the woman said as she stood at the curb. “It’s even more beautiful than its pictures. I’m so excited.”

Paying guests, and happy ones at that. Just what Jenn needed. She jumped off the swing, leaving it shivering and squeaking on its chains. She rushed to the front door, only to stop short at the sight of the registration desk and the door beyond it. Aunt Cassandra had a telepathic feel for arriving guests and would be coming through that door any second. Making a quick decision, Jenn turned, raced down the front steps, passing the new guests coming up as she ran down.

The woman, all cheer and goodwill, smiled at Jenn as they passed. “Hello.”

Jenn ignored her. She was in no mood to be pleasant and innkeeper-y. She raced around the side of the house, in the back door, through the kitchen, and up the back steps to her room. Sanctuary. She glanced at her CD player. She wished she had the nerve to put on some really wild, hard rock and crank it full volume. That’d show Aunt Cassandra what she thought of her and her interference and her sacred SeaSong. Instead, Jenn threw herself on her bed—Aunt Cassandra’s bed—and had a good cry over the wretchedness of life.

She cried a long time.

A
S DAN DOUBLE
knotted the laces on his running shoes, he peered out one of his windows. Nice Saturday morning. Sunny, brilliant blue sky. He wondered what the temperature was. If he were going to stay here any length of time, he’d have to get a thermometer to hang outside the window. Granted, he could use the Weather Channel either on the TV or on-line, but nothing beat the real thing.

For want of the real thing, he flicked the TV on and learned the temperature, at least in Atlantic City, was fifty-two. Not bad. Not bad at all.

He grabbed his ratty running sweatshirt, the one that read NO BRAND in large letters and
I REFUSE TO WEAR THEIR NAMES UNLESS THEY WEAR MINE
in smaller letters. He slipped outside and walked around the side of the building to the backyard to do some stretching exercises. As he walked, he glanced up at the line of windows that formed the enclosed porch where later that morning he and the other guests would be served a full breakfast. None of that continental breakfast stuff for SeaSong. Cassandra Marie Merton served full breakfasts all year long.

Thinking about her brought a thoughtful frown to his face. Last night when she’d literally run into him, her face had been taut with hurt, her huge hazel eyes blinking hard to hold the tears at bay. Not that he
blamed her. He’d heard what the girl—spoiled, nasty kid—had said.

“Of course you don’t understand. How could you? You’re just a dried-up old maid!”

Talk about hitting below the belt, especially when the beautiful Cass was anything but dried up.

He wanted to hug her, to comfort her, to tell her—what? He tried to think of something to say that would help her feel better, something that would take that haunted look off her face. Nothing had surfaced. He was as dry as an abandoned well.

He’d grimaced slightly, trying to remember the last time he offered anyone comfort. Another waterless well. Was it a matter of his not knowing how to comfort or a matter of being too busy too long to even notice when someone needed it? Neither option said anything positive about his character.

When the distraught Cass disappeared into the back of the house, the part he assumed was for the family, he turned to the girl in the swing and glared. If he couldn’t make Cass feel better, he could make the girl feel bad. He was more than surprised when the girl gasped at his expression and her face crumbled. She dropped her head to her knees to hide from him.

Feeling as though he’d kicked a puppy, albeit one with a nasty bite, he drove off to his solitary dinner. Several times while he ate, his mind wandered from the book he brought along to the scene on the porch, but it wasn’t the kid’s distress he saw. It was Cass’s. The same vision continued to plague him when he wandered aimlessly down the boardwalk, when he came back to his room and watched an old Clint Eastwood cowboy movie on TV, when he lay in the haze between sleeping and waking.

Each time he wished he’d been smart enough to help. Even now in the fresh light of a new day as he clamped first one knee, then the other to his chest, he tried to think of what he might say the next time he saw her.

Just ignore the kid. She’s just jealous and spiteful
.

Oh, yeah. Beat up on the kid. That’d impress Cass.

Pay no attention. She’s too blind to recognize true beauty when she sees it
.

He grimaced. A bit over the top, but didn’t women love compliments? And he really meant it about the beauty part. Just looking
at Cass was a pleasure. He rolled his head around on his neck, knowing he’d never say anything about how beautiful she was. He hadn’t the courage. Still, there had to be something comforting that wouldn’t embarrass either of them. He just needed to think harder, though why he was worrying about her was anyone’s guess. He barely knew her. Who had time for such nonsense?