Patricia Potter (15 page)

She closed her eyes and let the sun bless her. Peter and Tara were well trained around water. They were, Meara thought gratefully, both really good kids. Like hers would be. Funny she had never thought that way before.

It was strange how her priorities had changed in such a short period of time, priorities and needs. She knew she had been lucky in many ways, although she realized she had also made some of her own luck. She could easily have slipped into domestic service as her mother had. It had been what her mother, who had never had high aspirations, had expected. When Meara had expressed hope for more, her mother had thought she should go into teaching or nursing, never a man’s occupation. A man didn’t want to marry a woman who competed with him, she said, and to her mother, marriage was the ultimate and only choice.

But the world was changing, and Meara had wanted to be a part of that change. Why shouldn’t she have the same chances, the same opportunities as men? But she had to fight for each one, from her advisers who told her she should teach to professors who took delight in baiting her.

Although Meara wished there wasn’t a war, she was fully aware of the opportunities and freedom it provided. She had been ready to grab both. But now the realities of the fighting were too close. Death and injury no longer touched only people in the newspaper. They happened to real people, to Michael, and to those like him.

To the best of all the young men.
Meara’s fingers dug into the sand as waves of sadness passed through her. She thought of last night and how much she had wanted to be a part of Michael, to know what it was truly like to love and be loved. Perhaps she would never know, or having once known, she would be like her mother, never able to love again. She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything anymore, only that she needed Michael Fielding, needed him in a way she had never thought she would need anyone. And if she didn’t explore that need, she was bitterly afraid she would spend her life wondering. Wondering and regretting.

“It’s mine.”

“I saw it first.”

“But I picked it up first.”

Meara opened her eyes. The really good kids were standing boxerlike, eye to eye, the pitch of their voices increasing with every word. “Come show me what it is,” she intervened.

Peter, with the item clutched in his hand, ran over to her. It was a piece of metal, so light it had not sunk in the sea which had carried it here. Meara took it in her hands and fingered the smooth edges on one side, ridges on the other. Part of a photo frame, she imagined. Her fingers ran over ridges that probably had held a cherished photo now long gone. Meara could only imagine where it had come from, who once had owned it, or what loved one had graced it. Jekyll Island was not far from the shipping lanes to England, and there had been any number of allied ships sunk along the coast. Her natural curiosity reached out and wondered, and she felt an infinite sadness. Someone was probably missing, and someone else was waiting. Holding the piece of gold-colored metal, she could almost feel the emotion of those involved, and again she personally and profoundly felt the hideousness of this war. She thought of waiting helplessly, awaiting word of Michael, not knowing whether he was alive or dead, not knowing if he was injured and hurting, or alone somewhere in a life raft waiting desperately for rescue.

She suddenly hated the Germans, hated the U-boats that preyed and destroyed and killed wantonly.

“What is it?” Peter asked impatiently.

Too young. He was much too young to understand. And he shouldn’t. “Just an old piece of metal, love,” she said. “Why don’t you and Tara go up to the dunes and bury it so the edges won’t hurt anyone.”

“But I want to keep it,” Peter wailed.

“Why?” Meara asked practically.

“Because…well…maybe it’s part of a bomb or something,” he said hopefully.

“You
are
bloodthirsty,” Meara smiled. “But I think it’s more like a frame of a stove.” Nothing, she knew, could be duller to Peter.

His young face fell, then brightened again. “Maybe it came from a German sub.”

“Perhaps,” she said agreeably, “but we will never know and it has some very sharp edges, so why don’t you give it a nice burial.”

Peter made a face, but he sensed that Meara’s mind was made up. He’d learned long ago what that meant. “All right,” he sighed, “but I get to tell mother and father.”

“Me, too,” chimed in Tara, who didn’t understand why there was such a fuss. Her sharp eyes had found it, but the only reason she’d then wanted the object was that Peter did. Now her interest completely waned as she spied a small lizard darting across the sand, and she went speeding after it.

The sun was high, signaling noon, when they left the beach after a proper and respectful burial of the sea’s offering. As they started toward the path, she saw Michael, leaning against a great oak tree, watching them. Peter saw him at the same time and went scrambling over, winning an engaging grin in response.

Meara felt the thumping of her heart accelerate, her blood grow warmer, and her throat catch. He was incredibly handsome, leaning lazily against the tree, the tawny hair mussed by the breeze. He was wearing white slacks and a blue shirt, its sleeves rolled up to the elbows, showing the tanned muscled strength of his arms. His eyes, a deeper, richer blue than the ocean, were unreadable as they studied her until they reached her feet. As usual, she was barefoot, a pair of sandals in her hand. His eyes crinkled at the edges as he regarded them with interest, and she felt suddenly awkward. It seemed he always appeared at her most windblown and disreputable.

He bent his head gravely as he listened to Peter’s rapid excited chatter, and Meara knew the boy was speaking of his discovery, the piece of metal. The pleasant expression on Michael’s face stiffened, and he looked at her again before he said a few words to Peter and then walked toward her. He was using the cane again, and his leg seemed stiffer than usual, probably from all the exercise last night. Her face flamed as she remembered the nature of some of the exercise.

His hand came out and touched a lock of hair. “You still look like a sea witch,” he said, but there was a hesitancy in his voice, a rare note of uncertainty.

Tara looked up with interest. “A witch?”

“A good one,” he amended quickly with a wry twist of his mouth, “but none the less powerful.”

“Like the Wizard of Oz?” she asked.

He looked up at Meara. “Wizard of Oz?”

“Where have you been?”

“Obviously not where I should have been,” he observed.

“That’s all right,” Peter said. “He knows better stuff, like how to shoot.”

Michael lowered himself awkwardly to one knee. “That’s not better ‘stuff’ at all,” he said. “Sea witches and wizards are much more important.”

Peter looked at him with betrayed disbelief.

“But that’s for girls.”

Michael laughed. “Not always. I like witches quite a bit.”

“You do?”

“Certainly.”

Tara tugged at Michael’s shirt, tired of being left out of this male conversation. “Will you help us with another sand castle?”

“Not today,” he said, “but perhaps tomorrow.”

She gave him a beatific smile, satisfied for the moment with the answer.

Michael stood and looked at Meara, his smile gone. “I would like to talk to you later.”

She nodded, struck by the sudden grimness of his voice. “Mr. and Mrs. Connor always spend most of Saturday with the children. After lunch, I’m free, except for tennis at two.”

A muscle tightened in his cheek. “I’ve accepted an invitation to go along on a cruise among the islands this afternoon. I understand we won’t be back until late. Tomorrow. A picnic, perhaps. I can ask the clubhouse to prepare something.” It wasn’t exactly a question, more of a statement.

A ripping pain tore through her. She had wanted so much to see him today, to talk with him, to be with him, to know him better. She tried not to let it show. After that brief whimsy with the children, he was now at his unapproachable best. Meara had never seen anyone do that quite as aptly: to be charming and easy and warm one moment, and a million miles away the next. It frightened and intrigued her, the very illusionary aspect of him exciting and challenging.

Meara nodded. She was off all day Sunday, but his own guarded expression made hers equally so.

“I’ll pick you up at noon?”

“I attend church with the Connors.”

“One, then.”

“All right,” she said, carefully withholding any disappointment.

He studied her for a moment, his expression serious and unsmiling, and she started to feel the beginning of fear. And uncertainty. “Michael?”

He’d started to turn away but now he faced her again, his eyebrows furrowed, the laugh lines gone.

Meara wanted to say something, but his face was hard, and it was as if he’d never teased the children. It was almost as if someone else were standing there. She shook her head. “Nothing. I’ll see you tomorrow,” but this time she couldn’t quite conceal the baffled hurt.

He gave her a half smile that said nothing, that seemed to be something he used on occasion to avoid commitment, on those occasions when some part of him left her, although his body remained. She shivered suddenly. She really didn’t know much about him. She had thought she did, but when he retreated her like this she wondered.

Imagination, she scolded herself as he limped toward the road, and she was flooded with a warm possessiveness. Nothing had changed since last night. He was lightning swift in his moods, probably, she thought, because of the war and the things he had done and experienced. But he had been wonderful, as usual, with the children, charming them so completely that they never even argued in front of him, never questioned as they did nearly everyone else.

Tomorrow. She would find out more about him tomorrow. She had always been very good at that, discovering little pieces about people, probing so gently they didn’t realize what she was doing. It was her interest, interest that was real and honest, that always seem to make people confide in her. With a little time alone with Michael Fielding, perhaps he would do the same. Yet doubt nagged at her. She’d never met anyone like him. He was obviously a very private person although when he wished, he could converse with anyone. He was obviously a loner, the way he sometimes sought solitude, apparently needing no company other than his own. Perhaps the sea did that to one. There was an element of that in herself, the need to be alone at times, so she could well understand a similar need in someone else.

“Meara.” A hand impatiently pulled at hers. “I’m hungry.”

She shook her head. There was no reason for disappointment, no reason he should drop all his plans for her. She would be alone with him tomorrow. She would feel his arms again, and everything would be all right.

Meara smiled brightly at Tara. “So am I, love. So am I.”

Fool. The more he tried to extricate himself, the deeper he was pulled into the quicksand of caring.

Michael truly enjoyed the Connor children. They were bright and outgoing and appealing. Whenever he was around them, he retreated into a warm cozy world that had no ugliness in it.

They so thoroughly drew him into their small intimate circle he felt as if he were an honored and beloved guest. For moments at a time he could forget why he was here. He could believe himself an honest part of a charmed, protected world.

But there were no protected worlds any more.

He had to force himself to think of his mother, his brother. His duty. The bloody duty. Every time he thought of the sub approaching this island, he was filled with crushing sickness.

Michael had avoided Hans all morning. Unable to sleep, he’d left his room before dawn and found the bicycle. Instead of returning, he had sat on the beach, watching the sun rise, weighing his options and finding none.

He had absolutely no illusions about Canaris. He didn’t doubt that the admiral would carry out every threat, whether he had been a friend of Michael’s father or not.

Nor did he have any illusion about Hans Weimer. Michael knew he would have to be very careful around Meara and the children, or Weimer might try to use them in some way against him. If his “partner” had the least suspicion that Michael was beginning to care for them, there was no telling what Hans might attempt.

It was for that reason he’d proposed the picnic for Sunday, when Hans would not be on the island. And he’d planned his meeting with Meara carefully today. Far away from the clubhouse grounds. An accidental meeting on the beach. Nothing more.

In the meantime, he had important successes to report to Hans: the contact with the sub, the growing relationships he was developing with the targeted members of the Jekyll Island Club. The cruise this afternoon would involve several of them.

He would not let himself think ahead, to the moment those who had offered open friendship would fully comprehend who he was, and what he had manipulated.

It’s war, he told himself. War. He would be saving German lives, perhaps thousands of them.

But, Christ, at what price?

Meara’s tennis game, never really outstanding, was a disaster. She couldn’t keep her attention on the ball. She kept looking toward the clubhouse, at every person who ascended or descended the steps.