Upon a Mystic Tide (14 page)

Bess blinked, then blinked again.
No, it doesn’t.

Ah, you’re finally getting it.

He sounded smug. For some reason, that didn’t bother her a bit. Funny, but knowing heart to heart that someone approves of you makes a lot of their irksome little traits endearing. And he really did have her best interests at heart.
Tony? Why were you so emotional?

I’d rather not say.

Please.

He sighed.
Because I see things you can’t yet see or ones you choose not to see.

What kind of things?
She ran a fingertip along the smooth banister. It was so slick and smelled faintly of lemon oil. Miss Hattie pampered everything in the inn. Did the Atlanta judge owner realize what a treasure he had in her?

I’m not free to tell you specifics—professional ethics. For now, be content to know that the magic lives.

Content? He had to be kidding. This was the most god-awful news she could have received—ten times worse than Millicent Fairgate firing her. Bess tried to look away from Cecelia’s portrait and couldn’t. Too preoccupied to remember speaking wasn’t necessary, she spoke aloud. “No, Tony. The magic can’t be there for me and John. I won’t let it.”

I don’t think you have a choice.
He gentled his voice.

“But loving and losing him the first time nearly killed me. I can’t go through that again.” Fear crawled up her back. “I won’t!”

Shivering, she jerked her gaze away from Cecelia’s sweet face and locked it on the hardwood steps. Bathed in mellow light from the chandelier overhead, the stairs gleamed, as glossy and well-tended as the rest of the sprawling home. This couldn’t be true. She wouldn’t let it be true. There would be
no
magic
—
not between her and John Mystic.

The magic lives.

Bess groaned and turned, rushed down the stairs, then raced back to the kitchen. She had to get away from here. The sooner, the better. She couldn’t trust herself around John. And certainly not here with him. Strange things happened here.

Something Maggie MacGregor had told her niggled at Bess’s memory, but stayed just out of reach. “No matter,” Bess told herself. “No matter.”

She had to get away. John already had hurt her more than any man should be able to hurt a woman. Yet here she-stood, wanting to heal the sadness from him, having to fight to keep from opening herself up to all that agony and pain again. Hadn’t she learned anything from the last time with him?

Leap—

He’d followed her. “Shut up, Tony.” Bess stuffed a glass under the running faucet and filled it with cold water. Her hand shook so hard that water splashed all over the counter and floor. “I mean it. I’ve got all I can handle right now and then some. I don’t need you or your messages driving me up the wall, too.”

Touchy.

“Damn right.”

Crimney, Doc. You can’t deny the truth. Accept it.

“I can’t. I won’t! It
 . . .
hurts.”

But pain is an affirmation of life. Be grateful you can feel it. Be grateful your situation isn’t hopeless. Be grateful you have a second chance to love.

“But it
is
hopeless, Tony. Don’t you see? John doesn’t love me. He never loved me.”

The magic lives, Bess. Whether you stay or go, that isn’t going to change because it lives in you.

The full weight of his words hit her. She slid bonelessly down the cabinet to the floor and sat there in the puddle of water. Tears, stinging her eyes, spilled over, then trickled down her cheeks to drip onto her blouse. “Oh God, Tony. What am I going to do? You’re right. It does live. After all this time, I still feel it. I love what he does to a pair of jeans. I love what the way he looks at me makes me feel. I don’t love him—I’d have to be crazy to love him. Worse than crazy. But I want him. I want him so much I ache in places I didn’t know I had.” She bent over and buried her face in her hands. “What am I going to do?”

Jimmy Goodson raised up
from under the hood of Bess’s BMW and let his gaze slide from Bess to John Mystic, then back to Bess. They looked scared of each other, and kind of like Jimmy felt every time he saw Nolene Baker over at the Blue Moon Cafe. Jelly-bellied, Miss Hattie called it. When Nolene outgrew being jailbait, he’d be twenty-six. Then he’d ask her out on a date—if she wasn’t still sweet on Andrew Carnegie Johnson. The mayor’s son, whose mama insisted he study to be a lawyer, had a lot more to offer a girl than the grease monkey orphan of a drunk, even if Miss Hattie did say it only matters what a man is inside. ’Course, Nolene’s parents having to get married so Nolene wouldn’t be illegitimate wouldn’t set well with Lydia, Andrew’s mama. She wanted more than for Andrew to be a lawyer. Yeah, that social-climbing snob definitely had her eye on politics for Andy. A wife with parents who’d had to get married might just keep Andrew from snatching up Nolene. But if it did, then did Jimmy still want Nolene? He was crazy about her, no doubt about it. Maybe him hoping she’d be crazy about him was asking for too much, considering his own parents and all. Maybe her just settling for him was the best he could hope for. Might be foolish, him wishing that just once someone besides Miss Hattie thought he was special.

Deflated, Jimmy looked at Bess. “I’m gonna have to take ’er to the shop.”

Bess nodded and shoved her hair back from her face. It was loose and she looked kind of pretty for an older lady.

“Any idea what’s wrong?”

“Not yet, Mrs. Mystic.” Jimmy scratched his head. “Isn’t any of the usual. Starter, plugs, points, distributor—all check out fine.”

“She prefers Bess Cameron, Jimmy.”

His face went hot. “Yes, sir.” He turned to Bess. “Sorry, Mrs. Cameron.”

“It’s no problem,” she said, her gaze sliding to the dirt telling him it
was
a
problem but she didn’t want to embarrass him.

John stepped to the front of the car, between it and the tow truck. “I’ll help you hook it up.”

In minutes, they had the BMW chained up and the safety-catches in place. Good to go, Jimmy headed down the gravel drive, back toward Main Street. He looked in his rearview mirror and glimpsed Batty Beaulah Favish hiding in Miss Hattie’s orange tiger lilies, decked out for bird-watching with her binoculars.

Jimmy guffawed. Crazy old bat. Only birds she ever watched were Seascape guests. Right now, she had her peepers locked on Bess and John Mystic. They were heading toward the cliffs. Tourists did that a lot. Though Jimmy couldn’t recollect any of ’em watching the ocean more than T. J. MacGregor had, before Maggie had come to the village.

Bill Butler’s oldest boy, Aaron, stepped out from behind Beaulah. He had his dad’s antique spyglass in his hand, mimicking her in her ghost-hunting again. Jimmy grunted. “Crazy old bat.”

At the end of the drive, Jimmy toed the brakes and waited for the sheriff to drive past. He was heading down Main Street, toward the village. Too early for his afternoon visit to the Blue Moon. Likely he was keeping an eye on that group of motorcyclists down at the cafe. They were kind of dusty from their ride, but they were good people. Up here from Arizona and on their way to the hill country to do a benefit for charity. Just goes to prove Miss Hattie’s right: When you look at folks, you see what you expect to see instead of what’s true about ‘em.

Jimmy debated. Left to Fisherman’s Co-op? Or right to the garage? He probably should swing by and tell Aaron’s folks he had that spyglass again. Leslie would be gone to the auction most likely, but Bill would be there, running the store and keeping an eye on their other two boys. They were having themselves a time in that mud puddle. Yeah, Jimmy should drop in on Bill and give him the word, but then Bill would be ticked to the gills at Aaron
 . . .

“Naw.” Jimmy turned right. Best let the kid have fun while he could. Though if he broke that glass, his dad would fillet his backside. Batty Beaulah really ought not be filling Aaron’s head with nonsensical stuff such as ghosts, though. Sure, odd things kind of happened at Seascape. But they happened because Miss Hattie was so good. Hadn’t she always said that good things come to those who try to live right? Shoot, everyone in the village knows she lives as right as a body’s able—and she never lies. ’Course good stuff happens at the inn. She lives there.

At the shop, Jimmy parked then unhooked Bess’s car from the tow. Horace Johnson watched from his old gas pumps next door at The Store, his
Local Yokel
—emblemed baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Lydia griped about those old-fashioned pumps all the time. Said they made the place look like something out of the Stone Age. But Jimmy kind of liked ’em, just as he did the old glass postal boxes down at the post office. It was comforting, knowing a man could count on some things staying the same.

He looked back at Bess’s BMW. Strange. Out at the inn, its finish had looked stumbled, as dull as dirty brass, but here it shined as if freshly waxed. He scratched at his neck. Strange that the car wouldn’t kick over too. Nothing wrong he could see that ought to keep it from starting
 . . .

The betting over at the Blue Moon had started, and Bess and John had looked at each other all jelly-bellied. Jimmy stared at the car. Why not? It was worth a shot.

His stomach knurled. He got in, hit the seat lever to get his knees out of his gut, then keyed the ignition. If his hunch paid off, he might just win enough to buy Miss Hattie one of those yellow tea rose bushes she’d been wanting on his run over to Boothbay Harbor. He sure would like making her happy. “Come on, baby,” he whispered from between his teeth, gripped the BMW’s steering wheel, then turned the key. “Come
 . . .
on.”

The car cranked right up. The engine purred sweeter than Candy, the cockeyed cat, when she’d gotten a bowl full of Lucy’s cornbread scraps at the Blue Moon.

A slow smile tugged at Jimmy’s lips then spread over his face. He unfolded his lanky body, eased out of the car then into the shop, heading straight for the phone.

He dialed and then waited.

On the third ring, Lucy answered. “Blue Moon Cafe.”

“Lucy?” Elbows bent, he leaned against the counter. Was Nolene over at the cafe, or had she and some of her friends hauled it over to the shopping mall? He didn’t much care for her venturing that far from the village with just a bunch of girls. Things happened in the city and, for all her bluster and boasts of being grown-up now, Nolene had been protected her whole life. Lucy Baker was a fine mama. “It’s me, Jimmy.”

“Hey, sugar.”

“Listen, how’s the betting going on Bess Cameron and John Mystic?” Jimmy wiped a grease spot off his knuckle with a red shop rag, then tossed it onto the scuffed counter. In the breeze, the fan belts hanging on nails slapped against the far wall and ruffled the pages on the girlie swimsuit calendar that gave Pastor Brown hissy fits. The smell of the salty sea mixed with that of oil. No matter what Lydia Johnson said, it was a pleasing scent.

“Betting’s been brisk.”

Jimmy had expected that. “What’s Lydia Johnson down for?” Horace’s uppity wife was as snooty a woman as they come—nothing like Miss Hattie. ’Course, Miss Hattie was the finest woman God ever put on this earth, and measuring up to her was impossible. But, for all her faults, Lydia did have a nose for smelling romance; Jimmy had to give her that.

“Twelve dollars and twenty-one cents.”

Hefty bet for Lydia. “For or against them getting back together?”

“Against.” Lucy sighed. “A shame, but I’m inclined to agree with her, Jimmy. They’ve been separated a long time, and when he showed up here this afternoon, Bess went as stiff as a plank and as white as one of Bill Butler’s sails. Miss Millie’s betting for ’em, though, bless her heart. I think she’s missing Lance. It’s close to what would have been their anniversary, and she’s waxing a little on the sentimental side.”

“Don’t you worry about Miss Millie. Hatch will perk her up,” Jimmy said confidently. About the only time Hatch ventured from the lighthouse over to Miss Millie’s Antique Shoppe was when she was feeling down. Vic said Hatch had a built in radar that went off whenever Miss Millie was out of sorts. After seeing it prove true time and again, Jimmy believed it.