Secrets of the Lost Summer (13 page)

Jess reached across the table and touched his hand. “I want you, Mark. That’s all.”

He grinned at her. “I’ll go with that.”

“I don’t have to try living somewhere else, but I do want to travel.”

“You’re not afraid to? You’re not using me as an excuse, putting words in my mouth so that you don’t have to admit that you’re as nervous about traveling as your mother is?”

“No.” Jess waited as the waiter delivered their main course. She loved the smell of the rich, spicy sauce but wasn’t sure she was that hungry anymore. The appetizers, bread and wine had filled her up, and she could feel her stomach churning at the thought of her mother and her pictures of California taped to her desk. “I’m determined not to let any fears stop me.”

“You’re not just dreaming, then—”

“Like my mother, you mean?” Jess didn’t wait for him to answer. “I want to travel. I’m willing to get on a plane. I haven’t had a reason to fly anywhere since my friend’s wedding in Chicago two years ago, but I did it.”

Mark scooped up a chunk of steaming lobster. “You make it sound like a root canal.”

Jess stared at the seafood, vegetables and pasta and resisted the urge to jump up and run out of the restaurant. “I want to go to Paris,” she blurted.

“Paris? When?”

On their honeymoon, she thought. Wouldn’t that be nice? But she didn’t know if there’d be a honeymoon. Mark liked the status quo of their relationship. They were comfortable. Why would he rock the boat with talk of marriage, a wedding, a honeymoon?

Jess finished off the gnocchi, thinking, and said finally, “I don’t know. Soon. Before the end of the year.”

“Paris is great. I’ve only been there once but I liked it.”

“That doesn’t mean you want to go again.”

He shrugged and didn’t rise to the bait. “Do you have your passport?”

“Not yet. I’m getting one,” Jess said, feeling defiant—as if somehow Mark were doubting her, challenging her. “Is your passport current?”

“I think I’ve got a couple of years left on it. I’ll check.”

“Then you’ll go with me?”

“Jess Frost and Paris… I suppose if I have to.”

She was ready to be offended but saw the twinkle in his eyes and the play of a smile at the corner of his mouth and laughed. “If we weren’t in a restaurant, I swear I’d throw something at you.”

He laughed, too, and any frustration, anxiety and defiance Jess felt fell away as they chatted and enjoyed the rest of their dinner.

Out on Newbury, Mark slipped his hand into hers. Jess glanced back at the restaurant. “I wonder if Olivia misses Boston. I’m not sure she’s told us everything about why she’s back in Knights Bridge.”

“Maybe not.”

“I think something happened with her work and a friend of hers—Marilyn Bryson. Have you met her?”

“Not that I know of. What about Roger Bailey? Is she doing freelance work for him? I introduced them, but I haven’t talked to him in a couple months. Everything okay?”

“I don’t know,” Jess said.

“Olivia’s not one to discuss her work, especially if there are problems,” Mark said. “I can call Roger, see what I can find out.”

“I just hope she’s okay.”

“She seems happy and excited about what she’s doing, but she has to be careful not to let her pride and stubbornness keep her from asking for help when she needs it, or even just getting a little moral support.”

Jess looked over at him. “Is that what you think I do, too? I’m her sister—”

“But you have me,” he said, his voice low, sexy.

They continued down the busy street. Jess found everything around her energizing. The crush of people, the traffic, the lights. Whatever problems she had were back in Knights Bridge—and she wasn’t. She was here, walking in the city on a cool, early-spring night with the man she loved. For now, she thought, Paris could wait.

Eight

O
livia decided to have dinner in the kitchen, not in the dining room, which would have seemed too intimate, too romantic. She lit candles on the kitchen table and got out her good dishes, white china she had found at a Boston yard sale. Dylan arrived with a bottle of wine and let her be the one to say that the roast was awful. It’d been a while since she’d cooked one, and it was tough and stringy. The sides were decent, though—mesclun salad with a few snips of fresh herbs, roasted Brussels sprouts and butternut squash with a dash of nutmeg.

They talked about design, Boston and her family’s custom millwork business. Dylan deflected questions about himself, not necessarily, Olivia thought, because he had anything to hide but because he wanted to know about her, whether she could help him understand why his father had bought Grace Webster’s house.

Or he was just bored and curious.

He switched on an overhead light in the dining room of Grace’s—
his
—house. They’d walked up the road after dinner, dusk making the surrounding fields and woods seem even quieter, more isolated.

“Grace left a lot of books behind,” Dylan said as they entered the dining room.

Olivia ran her fingertips along a row of musty books on a shelf of one of Grace’s old bookcases. “Latin readers, English grammar books.” She smiled back at Dylan. “A little midnight reading for you.”

He eased his jacket off his broad shoulders and hung it on the back of a dining chair. Olivia left her own jacket on. She didn’t expect to stay long, wasn’t even sure why she’d come.

He withdrew a slender volume from another shelf and read the spine. “
Scaramouche
by Rafael Sabatini. Have you read it?”

“When I was a teenager. It’s a lot of fun.”

“It’s about a swashbuckler during the French Revolution, isn’t it?”

“The main character is a fugitive who becomes a master swordsman.”

Dylan flipped open a page. “Noah might like it. He’s a master fencer.”

The mention of Noah Kendrick only reminded Olivia how little she knew about the man next to her. She abandoned the grammar and Latin books and checked out his shelf. She read a line of titles. “
The Scarlet Pimpernel, Jane Eyre, Rebecca, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers.
We must have stumbled on the action, romance and adventure section.”

“You seem surprised.”

“I guess I am. The Latin readers seem more in Grace’s character.”

“Most of these books look as if they’re in decent condition. They could be sold or donated. Why would she leave them here?”

“Good question,” Olivia said, glancing at the bottom shelf, which held more titles in a similar vein. “She’s in her nineties. Maybe she just didn’t want to bother, or she thought your father would enjoy them.”

Dylan slid
Scaramouche
back onto the shelf and pulled out a thick, warped copy of
The Count of Monte Cristo
and opened it. A yellowed bookplate was stuck to the inside cover, with
Grace Webster
printed in neat lettering under a sepia drawing of a cat sitting on a stack of books.

“Is there a date?” Olivia asked, then pointed, her arm brushing against his. “There. In the corner—
1938.
She must have had this book since she was a girl.”

He turned a page. “‘Chapter One, Marseille, The Arrival.’”

“Hooks you right into the story, doesn’t he? Have you read it?”

“I saw the movie,” Dylan said with a wink, replacing the book on the shelf.

“Your father was into adventures, although I suppose not ones in the pages of an Alexandre Dumas novel. He didn’t buy this house because Grace liked swashbucklers, but if she thought of him as a swashbuckler…” Olivia stopped herself. “She asked me if you were a scoundrel.”

Dylan laughed but seemed surprised as well as amused. “A scoundrel, huh?”

Olivia ran her fingertips over the row of adventure novels. “Your father was a treasure hunter. He could have stirred up her teenage soul.”

“That wouldn’t explain why he landed here in the first place. He loved looking into old mysteries and lost ships and such, but he lived in the present.”

Olivia watched Dylan return
The Count of Monte Cristo
to its spot on the dusty shelf. He was out of place here, in this leaking wreck of a house, she realized, but she couldn’t picture him in San Diego. Where did he live? What was his life there like? Finally she said, “This all must seem so foreign to you. You have a life in San Diego. You’ll go back to it tomorrow. Right now you’re trying to reconcile yourself to never knowing exactly why your father bought this place, aren’t you?”

He turned to her, pushed a few stray strands of hair out of her face. “Not even close. My father left me a trunk filled with files and God knows what else. I want to have a closer look.” He skimmed a knuckle across her cheek. “Then who knows.”

Her skin tingled from his touch, and she fought an urge to sink against him at the same time she fought an urge to run. “You can afford to do whatever you want with this place. Sell it, keep it, give it away. You have the means, and you don’t have any emotional attachments.”

“Do you? To this place?”

Olivia shook her head. “I guess it’ll always be Miss Webster’s house to me, but no—no emotional attachment.”

“It’s not a historic center-chimney farmhouse?”

“Are you making fun of me, Dylan McCaffrey?”

He leaned closer to her. “You’re not the starchy Yankee I expected Olivia Frost of The Farm at Carriage Hill to be.” He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Olivia…” He sighed. “Well, damn.” He spoke half under his breath, then kissed her, a quick, intense kiss that said he wanted more even as he stood back from her. “I’ve been thinking that was bound to happen. I suspect you have, too.”

She waved a hand, feeling a little breathless even from that brief contact. “Maybe.” She steadied herself. “Maybe in the back of my mind.”

“Hmm. I hope that means you’re not going to sic Buster on me.” He reached for his jacket. “Come on. I’ll drive you back down the road.”

“I can walk. The air will do me good. I walk Buster after dark all the time.” Olivia glanced around the sparsely furnished dining room. “Where do you sleep? I can’t imagine you brought an air mattress with you.”

“I made a bed out of old blankets. It’s not too bad.”

“Not quite the five-star accommodations you’re used to.”

“Softer than a skating rink.”

Before she could consider what she was doing, she said, “I have spare bedrooms if you want a proper bed.”

Dylan took a second too long to respond, the pause getting her heart racing. “Thanks for the offer. I should camp out here again tonight. I have an early flight.”

“Right. Well. At least you have your choice of reading if you can’t sleep.”

He walked out with her, giving her instructions on how to reach him should his property require more work and wishing her luck getting ready for the opening of The Farm at Carriage Hill.

It was as if their kiss had never happened. Of course, he lived a very different life from hers. He was worth millions. Sneaking a kiss probably wasn’t that big a deal for him.

Olivia figured a for sale sign would go up within days of his return to San Diego.

She had grabbed
The Three Musketeers
to take with her. She doubted she’d sleep well tonight, home alone, with scoundrels, swashbucklers, treasure hunters and one incredibly sexy ex-hockey player on her mind.

Dylan watched Olivia head down his driveway and onto the back road they shared before contemplating his situation. What did he know now that he hadn’t known the day he’d received her note?

Nothing more about why his father bought this place and didn’t tell him about it. But he had learned he didn’t particularly like hauling old appliances out of snow, mud and dead leaves…and that a certain brunette looked even better in person than on the internet. Kissing her might have been a mistake but it didn’t feel like one.

Turning down a bed in her house felt like the mistake.

His house was quiet and still.

He returned to the dining room and went through more of Grace Webster’s books. He didn’t know what he had expected to find. A treasure map? A forgotten letter describing lost treasure?

He found nothing.

Taking
The Count of Monte Cristo
with him, he went upstairs to his makeshift bed. He couldn’t pinpoint why he hadn’t accepted Olivia’s offer of one of her spare rooms, except that it hadn’t felt like the right thing to do—for her sake, at least.

He pulled back a wool blanket that smelled like mothballs.

This house, this place, his father, his pretty neighbor. He wasn’t accustomed to his head spinning with emotions, but he had to admit it was.

He plugged in a small lamp on the floor next to his pallet and adjusted the shade so that the dim bulb was pointed at his book. Had his father ever spent a night here? Olivia had raised a good point, Dylan thought. What if he never knew why his father had come to Knights Bridge?

He opened his book to page one, and, putting everything else out of his mind, started reading the tale of Edmond Dantès and his adventures.