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Wild about Harry
Linda Lael Miller
Harry Griffith deals in stark realities and plays for very high stakes, and he hasn't done anything impulsive since he was little. Then he meets Amy. And her two kids. She happens to be the comely young widow of his best buddy. Suddenly he's Mr. Spontaneity. Amy is certainly wild about Harry. From his sexy Aussie accent to his devilish good looks, she thinks he's the cat's meow. But she feels trapped by bitter heartache, unable to let go of the husband she lost.What's it going to take to get these two together? Looks as if a certain someone may have to pull some strings from upstairs. And what could be sweeter than a match made in heaven?
Wild about Harry
New York Times Bestselling Author
Linda Lael Miller
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Harry Griffith deals in stark realities and plays for very high stakes, and he hasn’t done anything impulsive since he was little. Then he meets Amy. And her two kids. She happens to be the comely young widow of his best buddy. Suddenly he’s Mr. Spontaneity. Amy is certainly wild about Harry. From his sexy Aussie accent to his devilish good looks, she thinks he’s the cat’s meow. But she feels trapped by bitter heartache, unable to let go of the husband she lost. What’s it going to take to get these two together? Looks as if a certain someone may have to pull some strings from upstairs. And what could be sweeter than a match made in heaven?
For Jim Lang,
who married the girl with snowflakes in her hair,
thereby proving what a smart guy he really is.
Contents
Chapter One (#u8587db42-5559-529f-8906-81397d8b8734)
Chapter Two (#ue06cf634-624b-5738-a130-c21efd802b54)
Chapter Three (#ub4db38b5-c937-56cd-a74e-a3dbf513caf1)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
1
Amy Ryan was safe in her bed, drifting in that place where slumber and wakefulness mesh into a tranquil twilight, when she distinctly felt someone grasp her big toe and wriggle it.
“Amy.”
She groaned and pulled the covers up over her head. Two full years had passed since her handsome, healthy young husband, Tyler, had died on the operating table during a routine appendectomy. She couldn’t be hearing his voice now.
“No,” she murmured. “I refuse to have this dream again. I’m waking up right now!”
Amy’s toe moved again, without orders from her brain. She swallowed, and her heart rate accelerated. Quickly, expecting to find eight-year-old Ashley’s cat, Rumpel, at the foot of the bed playing games, she reached out and snapped on the bedside lamp.
A scream rushed into her throat, coming from deep inside her, but she swallowed it. Even though Tyler was standing there, just on the other side of her blanket chest, Amy felt no fear.
She could never be afraid of Ty. No, what scared her was the explicit possibility that she was losing her mind at thirty-two years of age.
“This can’t be happening,” she whispered hoarsely, raising both hands to her face. From between her fingers, she could still see Tyler grinning that endearing grin of his. “I’ve been through counseling,” she protested. “I’ve had grief therapy!”
Tyler chuckled and sat down on the end of the bed.
Amy actually felt the mattress move, so lifelike was this delusion.
“I’m quite real,” Tyler said, having apparently read her mind. “At least, real is the closest concept you could be expected to understand.”
“Oh, God,” Amy muttered, reaching blindly for the telephone.
Tyler’s grin widened. “This is a really lousy joke,” he said, “but I can’t resist. Who ya gonna call?”
Amy swallowed and hung up the receiver with an awkward motion of her hand. What could she say? Could she dial 911 and report that a ghost was haunting her bedroom?
If she did, the next stop would not be the Twilight Zone, it would be the mental ward at the nearest hospital.
Amy ran her tongue over dry lips, closed her eyes tightly, then opened them again, wide.
Tyler was still sitting there, his arms folded, charming smile in place. He had brown curly hair and mischievous brown eyes, and Amy had been in love with him since her freshman year at the University of Washington. She had borne him two children, eight-year-old Ashley and six-year-old Oliver, and the loss of her young husband had been the most devastating experience of Amy’s life.
“What’s happening to me?” Amy rasped, shoving a hand through her sleep-rumpled, shoulder-length brown hair.
Tyler scratched the back of his neck. He was wearing slacks and a blue cashmere cardigan over a tailored white shirt. “I look pretty solid, don’t I?” He sounded proud, the way he used to when he’d won a particularly difficult case in court or beaten a colleague at racquet ball. “And let me tell you, being able to grab hold of your toe like that was no small feat, no pun intended.”
Amy tossed back the covers, scrambled into the adjoining bathroom and frantically splashed cold water on her face. “It must have been the spicy cheese on the nachos,” she told herself aloud, talking fast.
When she straightened and looked in the mirror, though, she saw Tyler’s reflection. He was leaning against the doorjamb, his arms folded.
“Pull yourself together, Amy,” he said good-naturedly. “It’s taken me eighteen months to learn to do this, and I’m not real good at sustaining the energy yet. I could fade out at any time, and I have something important to say.”
Amy turned and leaned back against the counter, her hands gripping the marble edge. She sank her teeth into her lower lip and wondered what Debbie would make of this when she told her about it. If she told her.
Your subconscious mind is trying to tell you something, her friend would say. Debbie was a counselor in a women’s clinic, and she was working on her doctorate in psychology. It’s time to let go of Tyler and get on with your life.
“Wh-what did you want to—to say?” Amy stammered. She was a little calmer now and figured this figment of her imagination might give her an important update on what was going on inside her head. There was absolutely no doubt, as far as she was concerned, that some of her gears were gummed up.
Tyler’s gentle gaze swept her tousled hair, yellow cotton nightshirt and shapely legs with sad fondness.
“An old friend of mine is going to call you sometime in the next couple of days,” he said after a long moment. “His name is Harry Griffith, and he runs a multinational investment company out of Australia. They’re opening an office in Seattle, so Harry will be living here in the Puget Sound area part of the year. He’ll get in touch to offer his condolences about me and pay off on a deal we made the last time we were together. You should get a pretty big check.”
Amy certainly hadn’t expected anything so specific. “Harry?” she squeaked. She vaguely remembered Tyler talking about him.
Tyler nodded. “We met when we were kids. We were both part of the exchange student program—he lived here for six months, and then I went down there and stayed with Harry and his mom for the same amount of time.”
A lump had risen in Amy’s throat, and she swallowed it. Yes, Harry Griffith. Tyler’s mother, Louise, had spoken of him several times. “This is crazy,” she said. “I’m crazy.”
Her husband—or this mental image of her husband—smiled. “No, babe. You’re a little frazzled, but you’re quite sane.”
“Oh, yeah?” Amy thrust herself away from the bathroom counter and passed Tyler in the doorway to stand next to the bed. “If I’m not one can short of a six-pack, how come I’m seeing somebody who’s been dead for two years?”
Tyler winced. “Don’t use that word,” he said. “People don’t really die, they just change.”
Amy was feeling strangely calm and detached now, as though she were standing outside of herself. “I’ll never eat nachos again,” she said firmly.
Ty’s gentle brown eyes twinkled with amusement. When he spoke, however, his expression was more serious. “You’re doing very well, all things considered. You’ve taken good care of the kids and built a career for yourself, unconventional though it is. But there’s one area where you’re really blowing it, Spud.”
Amy’s eyes brimmed with tears. During the terrible days and even worse nights following Tyler’s unexpected death, she’d yearned for just such an experience as this. She’d longed to see the man she’d loved so totally, to hear his voice. She’d even wanted to be called “Spud” again, although she’d hated the nickname while Tyler was alive.
She sniffled but said nothing, waiting for Tyler to go on.
He did. “There are women who can be totally fulfilled without a man in their lives. Give them a great job and a couple of kids and that’s all they need. You aren’t one of those women, Amy. You’re not happy.”
Amy shook her head, marveling. “Boy, when my subconscious mind comes up with a message, it’s a doozy.”
Tyler shrugged. “What can I say?” he asked reasonably. “Harry’s the man for you.”
“You were the man for me,” Amy argued, and this time a tear escaped and slipped down her cheek.
He started toward her, as though he would take her into his arms, then, regretfully, he stopped. “That was then, Spud,” he said, his voice gruff with emotion. “Harry’s now. In fact, you’re scheduled to remarry and have two more kids—a boy and a girl.”
Amy’s feeling of detachment was beginning to fade; she was trembling. This was all so crazy. “And this Harry guy is my one and only?” she asked with quiet derision. She was hurt because Tyler had started to touch her and then pulled back.
“Actually, there are several different men you could have fulfilled your destiny with. That architect you met three months ago, when you were putting together the deal for those condos on Lake Washington, for instance. Alex Singleton—the guy who replaced me in the firm, for another.” He paused and shoved splayed fingers through his hair. “You’re not cooperating, Spud.”
“Well, excuse me!” Amy cried in a whispered yell, not wanting the children to wake and see her in the middle of a hallucination. “I loved you, Ty. You were everything to me. I’m not ready to care for anybody else!”
“Yes, you are,” Tyler disagreed sadly. Quietly. “Get on with it, Amy. You’re holding up the show.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, willing Tyler to disappear. When Amy looked again and found him gone, however, she felt all hollow and broken inside.
“Tyler?”
No answer.
Amy went slowly back to bed, switched out the light and lay down. “You’re losing it, Ryan,” she muttered to herself.
She tried to sleep, but images of Tyler kept invading her mind.
Amy recalled the first time they’d met, in the cafeteria at the University of Washington, when she’d been a lowly freshman and Tyler had been in his third year of law school. He’d smiled as he’d taken the chair across the table from Amy’s, and she’d been so thoroughly, instantly besotted that she’d nearly fallen right into her lime Jell-O.
After that day, Amy and Tyler had been together every spare moment. Ty had taken her home to Mercer Island to meet his parents at Thanksgiving, and at Christmas he’d given her a three-carat diamond.
Amy had liked Tyler’s parents immediately; they were so warm and friendly, and their gracious, expensive home practically vibrated with love and laughter. The contrast between the Ryans’ family life and Amy’s was total: Amy’s father, one of the most famous heart surgeons in the country, was a distant, distracted sort of man, totally absorbed in his work. Although Amy knew her dad loved her, in his own workaholic way, he’d never been able to show it.
The free-flowing affection among the Ryans had quickly become vital to Amy, and she was still very close to them, even though Tyler had been gone for two years.
Alone in the bed where she and Tyler had once loved and slept and sometimes argued, Amy wept. “This isn’t fair,” she told the dark universe around her.
With the morning, however, came a sense of buoyant optimism. It seemed only natural to Amy that she’d had a vivid dream about Tyler; he was the father of her children and she’d loved him with her whole heart.
She was sticking frozen waffles in the toaster when Oliver and Ashley raced into the kitchen. During the school year she had trouble motivating them in the mornings, but now that summer had come, they were up and ready for day camp almost as soon as the morning paper hit the doorstep.
“Yo, Mom,” Oliver said. He had a bandanna tied around his forehead and he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt with his favorite cartoon character on the front. “Kid power!” he whooped, thrusting a plastic sword into the air.
Ashley rolled her beautiful Tyler-brown eyes. “What a dope,” she said. She was eight and had a lofty view of the world.
“Be careful, Oliver,” Amy fretted good-naturedly. “You’ll put out someone’s eye with that thing.” She put the waffles on plates and set them down on the table, then went to the refrigerator for the orange juice. “Look, you two, I might be home late tonight. If I can’t get away, Aunt Charlotte will pick you up at camp.”
Charlotte was Ty’s sister and one of Amy’s closest friends.
Ashley was watching Amy pensively as she poured herself a cup of coffee and joined the kids at the table.
“Were you talking to yourself last night, Mom?” the child asked in her usual straightforward way.
Amy was glad she was sitting down because her knees suddenly felt shaky. “I was probably just dreaming,” she said, but the memory of Tyler standing there in their bedroom was suddenly vivid in her mind. He’d seemed so solid and so real.
Ashley’s forehead crumpled in a frown, but she didn’t pursue the subject any further.
Fortunately.
After Amy had rinsed the breakfast dishes, put them into the dishwasher and driven the kids to the park, where camp was held, she found herself watching for Tyler—waiting for him to come back.
When she’d showered and put on her best suit, a sleek creation of pale blue linen, along with a matching patterned blouse, she sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the telephone for what must have been a full five minutes. Then she dialed her best friend’s number.
“Debbie?”
“Hi, Amy,” Debbie answered, sounding a little rushed. “If this is about lunch, I’m open. Twelve o’clock at Ivar’s?”
Amy bit her lower lip for a moment. “I can’t, not today…I have appointments all morning. Deb—”
Debbie’s voice was instantly tranquil, all sense and sound of hurry gone. “Hey, you sound kind of funny. Is something wrong?”
“It might be,” Amy confessed.
“Go on.”
“I dreamed about Tyler last night, and it was ultra-real, Debbie. I wasn’t lying in bed with my eyes closed—I was standing up, walking around—we had an in-depth conversation!”
Debbie’s voice was calm, but then, she was a professional in the mental health field. It would take more than Amy’s imaginary encounter with her dead husband to shock this woman. “Okay. What about?”
Amy was feeling sillier by the moment. “It’s so dumb.”
“Right. So tell me anyway.”
“He said I was going to meet—this friend of his—Harry somebody. Who names people Harry in this day and age? I’m supposed to fall in love with this guy, marry him and have two kids.”
“Before nightfall?” Debbie retorted, without missing a beat.
“Practically. Ty implied that I’ve been holding up some celestial plan by keeping to myself so much!”
Debbie sighed. “This is one that could be worked out in a fifteen-minute segment of the Donahue show, Ryan. You’re a healthy young woman, and you haven’t been with a man since Ty, and you’re lonely, physically and emotionally. If you want to talk this out with somebody, I could give you a name—”
Amy was already shaking her head. “No,” she interrupted, “that’s all right. I feel foolish enough discussing this with my dearest friend. I don’t think I’m up to stretching out on a couch and telling all to some strange doctor.”
“Still—”
“I’ll be all right, Deb,” Amy broke in again, this time a little impatiently. She didn’t know what she’d wanted her friend to say when she told her about Tyler’s “visit,” but she felt let down. She hung up quickly and then dashed off to her first meeting of the day.
Amy often marveled that she’d made such a success of her business, especially since she’d dropped out of school when Tyler passed the bar exam and devoted herself entirely to being a wife and mother. She’d been totally happy doing those things and hadn’t even blushed to admit to having no desire to work outside the home.
After Tyler’s death, however, the pain and rage had made her so restless that staying home was impossible. She’d alternated between fits of sobbing and periods of wooden silence, and after a few weeks she’d gone numb inside.
One night, very late, she’d seen a good-looking, fast-talking man on television, swearing by all that was holy that she, too, could build a career in real estate trading and make a fortune.
Amy had enough money to last a lifetime, between Tyler’s life insurance and savings and her maternal grandmother’s trust fund, but the idea of a challenge, of building something, appealed to her. In fact, on some level it resurrected her. Here was something to do, something to keep her from smothering Ashley and Oliver with motherly affection.
She’d called a toll-free number and ordered a set of tapes and signed up for a seminar, as well.
The tapes arrived and Amy absorbed them. The voice was pleasant and the topic complicated enough that she had to concentrate, which meant she had brief respites from thinking about Tyler. Under any other circumstances, Amy would not have had the brass to actually do the things suggested by the tapes and seminar, but all her normal inhibitions had been frozen inside her, like small animals trapped in a sudden Ice Age.
She’d started buying and selling and wheeling and dealing, and she’d been successful at it.
Still, she thought miserably as she drove toward her meeting, Tyler had been right, she wasn’t happy. Now that the numbness had worn off, all those old needs and hurts were back in full force and being a real estate magnate wasn’t fulfilling them.
Harry Griffith smiled grimly to himself as he took off his headphones and handed them to his copilot, Mark Ellis. “Here you are, mate,” he said. “Bring her in for me, will you?”
Mark nodded as he eagerly took over the controls, and Harry left the cockpit and proceeded into the main section of the private jet. Often it was filled with business people, hangers-on and assorted bimbos, but that day Harry and Mark were cutting through the sky alone.
He went on to the sumptuous bedroom, unknotting his silk tie with one hand as he closed the door with the other. He’d had a meeting in San Francisco, but now he could change into more casual clothes.
With a sigh Harry pulled open a few drawers and took out a lightweight cable-knit sweater and jeans, still thinking of his friend. He hadn’t been present for Ty’s services two years before. He’d been in the outback, at one of the mines, and by the time he’d returned to Sydney and learned about Tyler’s death, it was three weeks after the fact.
He’d sent flowers to Tyler’s parents, who’d been like a second mother and father to him ever since his first visit to the states, and to the pretty widow. Harry had never seen Amy Ryan or her children, except on the front of the Christmas cards he always received from them, and he hadn’t known what to say to her.
It had been a damn shame, a man like Tyler dying in his prime like that, and Harry could find no words of comfort inside himself.
Now, however, he had business with Tyler’s lovely lady, and he would have to open this last door that protected his own grief and endure whatever emotions might be set free in the process.
Harry tossed aside his tie and began unfastening his cuff links. Maybe he’d even go and stand by Tyler’s grave for a while, tell his friend he was a cheeky lot for bailing out so early in the game that way.
He pulled the sweater on over his head, replaced his slacks with jeans, then stood staring at himself in the mirror. Like the bed, chairs and bureau, it was bolted down.
Where Tyler had been handsome in an altar-boy sort of way, Harry was classically so, with dark hair, indigo-blue eyes and an elegant manner. He regarded his exceptional looks as tools, and he’d used them without compunction, every day of his life, to get what he wanted.
Or most of what he wanted, that is. He’d never had a real family of his own, the way Tyler had. God knew, Madeline hadn’t even tried to disguise herself as a wife, and she’d sent the child she’d borne her first husband to boarding school in Switzerland. Madeline hadn’t wanted to trouble herself with a twelve-year-old daughter, and Eireen’s letters and phone calls had been ignored more than answered.
Harry felt sick, remembering. He’d tried to establish a bond with the child on her rare holidays in Australia, but while Madeline hadn’t wanted to be bothered with the little girl, she hadn’t relished the idea of sharing her, either.
Then, after another stilted Christmas, Madeline had decided she needed a little time on the “the continent,” and would therefore see Eireen as far as Zurich. Their plane had gone down midway between New Zealand and the Fiji Islands, and there had been no survivors.
Harry had not wept for his wife—the emotion he’d once mistaken for love had died long before she did—but he’d cried for that bewildered child who’d never been permitted to love or be loved.
Later, when Tyler had died, Harry had gotten drunk—something he had never done before or since—and stayed that way for three nightmarish days. It had been an injustice of cosmic proportions that a man like Tyler Ryan, who had had everything a man could dream of, should be sent spinning off the world that way, like a child from a carnival ride that turned too fast.
“Mr. Griffith?”
Mark’s voice, coming over the intercom system, startled Harry. “Yes?” he snapped, pressing a button on the instrument affixed to the wall above his bed, a little testy at the prospect of landing in Seattle.
“We’re starting our descent, sir. Would you like to come back and take the controls?”
“You can handle it,” Harry answered, removing his finger from the button. He thought of Tyler’s parents and the big house on Mercer Island where he’d spent some of the happiest times of his life. “You can handle it,” he repeated gravely, even though Mark couldn’t hear him now. “The question is, can I?”
Amy had had a busy day, but she’d managed to finish work on time to pick up Oliver and Ashley at day camp, and she was turning hot dogs on the grill in her stove when the telephone rang.
Oliver answered with his customary “Yo!” He listened to the caller with ever-widening eyes and then thrust the receiver in Amy’s direction. “I think it’s that guy from the movies!” he shouted.
Amy frowned, crossed the room and took the call. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Ryan?” The voice was low, melodic and distinctly Australian. “My name is Harry Griffith, and I was a friend of your husband’s—”
The receiver slipped from Amy’s hand and clattered against the wall. Harry Griffith? Harry Griffith! The man Tyler had mentioned in her dream the night before.
“Mom!” Ashley cried, alarmed. She’d learned, at entirely too young an age, that tragedy almost always took a person by surprise.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Amy said hastily, snatching up the telephone with one hand and pulling her daughter close with the other. “Hello? Mr. Griffith?”
“Are you all right?” he asked in that marvelous accent.
Amy leaned against the counter, not entirely trusting her knees to support her, and drew in a deep breath. “I’m fine,” she lied.
“I don’t suppose you remember me…”
Amy didn’t remember Harry Griffith, except from old photographs and things Tyler had said, and she couldn’t recall seeing him at the funeral. “You knew Tyler,” she said, closing her eyes against a wave of dizziness.
“Yes,” he answered. His voice was gentle and somehow encouraging, like a touch. “I’d like to take you out for dinner tomorrow night, if you’ll permit.”
If you’ll permit. The guy talked like Cary Grant in one of those lovely old black-and-white movies on the Nostalgia Channel. “Ah—well—maybe you should just come here. Say seven o’clock?”
“Seven o’clock,” he confirmed. There was brief pause, then, “Mrs. Ryan? I’m very sorry—about Tyler, I mean. He was one of the best friends I ever had.”
Amy’s eyes stung, and her throat felt thick. “Yes,” she agreed. “I felt pretty much the same way about him. I-I’ll see you at seven tomorrow night. Do you have the address?”
“Yes,” he answered, and then the call was over.
It took Amy so long to hang up the receiver that Oliver finally pulled it from her hand and replaced it on the hook.
“Who was that?” Ashley asked. “Is something wrong with Grampa or Gramma?”
“No, sweetheart,” Amy said gently, bending to kiss the top of Ashley’s head, where her rich brown hair was parted. “It was only a friend of your daddy’s. He’s coming by for dinner tomorrow night.”
“Okay,” Ashley replied, going back to the table.
Amy took the hot dogs from the grill and served them, but she couldn’t eat because her stomach was jumping back and forth between its normal place and her windpipe. She went outside and sat at the picnic table in her expensive suit, watching as the sprinkler turned rhythmically, making its chicka-chicka sound.
She tried to assemble all the facts in her mind, but they weren’t going together very well.
Last night she’d dreamed—only dreamed—that Tyler had appeared in their bedroom. Amy could ascribe that to the spicy Mexican food she’d eaten for dinner the previous night, but what about the fact that he’d told her his friend Harry Griffith would call and ask to see her? Could it possibly be a wild coincidence and nothing more?
She pressed her fingers to her temples. The odds against such a thing had to be astronomical, but the only other explanation was that she was psychic or something. And Amy knew that wasn’t true.
If she’d had any sort of powers, she would have foreseen Tyler’s death. She would have done something about it, warned the doctors, anything.
Presently, Amy pulled herself together enough to go back inside the house. She ate one hot dog, for the sake of appearances, then went to her bathroom to shower and put on shorts and a tank top.
Oliver and Ashley were in the family room, arguing over which program to watch on TV, when Amy joined them. Unless the exchanges threatened to turn violent, she never interfered, believing that children needed to learn to work out their differences without a parent jumping in to referee.
The built-in mahogany shelves next to the fireplace were lined with photo albums, and Amy took one of the early volumes down and carried it to the couch.
There she kicked off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the cushion, opening the album slowly, trying to prepare herself for the inevitable jolt of seeing Tyler smiling back at her from some snapshot.
After flipping the pages for a while, acclimating herself for the millionth time to a world that no longer contained Tyler Ryan, she began to look closely at the pictures.
2
The next day, on the terrace of a busy waterfront restaurant, Amy tossed a piece of sourdough bread to one of the foraging sea gulls and sighed. “For all I know,” she confided to her best friend, “Harry Griffith is an ax murderer. And I’ve invited him to dinner.”
Debbie’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “How bad can he be?” she asked reasonably. “Tyler liked him a lot, didn’t he? And your husband had pretty good judgment when it came to human nature.”
Amy nodded, pushing away what remained of her spinach and almond salad. “Yes,” she admitted grudgingly.
A waitress came and refilled their glasses of iced tea, and Debbie added half a packet of sweetener to hers, stirring vigorously. “So what’s really bugging you? That you saw Tyler in a dream and he said a guy named Harry Griffith would come into your life, and now that’s about to come true?”
“Wouldn’t that bother you?” Amy countered, exasperated. “Don’t look now, Deb, but things like this don’t happen every day!”
Debbie looked thoughtful. “The subconscious mind is a fantastic thing,” she mused. “We don’t even begin to comprehend what it can do.”
Amy took a sip of her tea. “You think I projected Tyler from some shadowy part of my brain, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Debbie answered matter-of-factly.
“Okay, fine. I can accept that theory. But how do you account for the fact that Tyler mentioned Harry Griffith, specifically and by name? How could that have come from my subconscious mind, when I never actually knew the man?”
Debbie shrugged. “There were pictures in the albums, and I’m sure Tyler probably talked about him often. I suppose his parents must have talked about the guy sometimes, too. We pick up subliminal information from the people around us all the time.”
Her friend’s theory made sense, but Amy was still unconvinced. If she’d only conjured an image of Tyler for her own purposes, she would have had him hold her, kiss her, tell her the answers to cosmic mysteries. She would never have spent those few precious moments together talking about some stranger from Australia.
Amy shook her head and said nothing.
Debbie reached out to take her hand. “Listen, Amy, what you need is a vacation. You’re under a lot of stress and you haven’t resolved your conflicts over Tyler’s death. Park the kids with Tyler’s parents and go somewhere where the sun’s shining. Sunbathe, spend money with reckless abandon, live a little.”
Amy recalled briefly that she’d always wanted to visit Australia, then pushed the thought from her mind. A trip like that wouldn’t be much fun all by herself. “I have work to do,” she hedged.
“Right,” Debbie answered. “You really need the money, don’t you? Tyler had a whopping insurance policy, and then there was the trust fund from your grandmother. Add to that the pile you’ve made on your own with this real estate thing—”
“All right,” Amy interrupted. “You’re right. I’m lucky, I have plenty of money. But work fills more than just financial needs, you know.”
Debbie’s look was wryly indulgent, and she didn’t speak at all. She just tapped the be-ringed fingers of her right hand against the upper part of her left arm, waiting for Amy to dig herself in deeper.
“Listen,” Amy whispered hoarsely, not wanting diners at the neighboring tables to overhear, “I know what you’re really saying, okay? I’m young. I’m healthy. I should be…having sex with some guy. Well, in case you haven’t noticed, the smart money is on celibacy these days!”
“I’m not telling you to go out and seduce the first man you meet, Amy,” Debbie said frankly, making no apparent effort to moderate her tone. “What I’m really saying is that you need to stop mourning Tyler and get on with your life.”
Amy snatched up her check, reached for her purse and pushed back her chair. “Thanks,” she snapped, hot color pooling in her cheeks. “You’ve been a real help!”
“Amy…”
“I have a meeting,” Amy broke in. And then she walked away from the table without even looking back.
Debbie caught up to her at the cash register. “My brother has a condo at Lake Tahoe,” she persisted gently. “You could go there for a few days and just walk along the shore and look at the trees and stuff. You could visit the house they used in Bonanza.”
Despite her nervous and irritable mood, Amy had to smile. “You make it sound like a pilgrimage,” she replied, picking up her credit card receipt and placing it neatly in a pocket of her brown leather purse. “Shall I burn candles and say, �Spirits of Hoss, Adam and Little Joe, show me the way’?”
Now it was Debbie who laughed. “Your original hypothesis was correct, Ryan. You are indeed crazy.”
It was an uncommonly sunny day, even for late June, and the sidewalks were crowded with tourists. Amy spoke softly, “I’m sorry, Deb. I was really a witch in there.”
Debbie grinned. “True, but being a friend means knowing somebody’s faults and liking them anyway. And to show you I do have some confidence in your reasoning processes, expect my cousin Max over tonight.” She paused to think a moment, then her pretty face was bright with inspiration. “Max will wear coveralls and pretend to be fixing the dishwasher or something. That way, there’ll be a man in the house, in case this Griffith guy really is an ax murderer, but Mr. Australia will never guess you were nervous about having him over.”
Amy wasn’t crazy about the idea, but she had neither the time nor the energy to try to talk Debbie out of it. She had an important meeting scheduled and, after that, some shopping to do at the Pike Place Market.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Amy promised, as the two women went in their separate directions.
Because she didn’t know whether to go with elegant or simple and typically American, Amy settled on a combination of the two and bought fresh salmon steaks to be seasoned, wrapped in foil and cooked on the backyard barbecue. She made a potato salad as well, and set out chocolate éclairs from an upscale bakery for dessert.
She was setting the picnic table with good silver when a jolting sensation in the pit of her stomach alerted her to the fact that she wasn’t alone.
Amy looked up, expecting to see Debbie’s cousin Max or perhaps even Tyler. Instead, she found herself tumbling end over end into the bluest pair of eyes she’d ever seen.
“Hello,” the visitor said.
Oliver, who had apparently escorted their guest from the front door, was clearly excited. “He sounds just like Crocodile Dundee when he talks, doesn’t he, Mom?” he crowed.
The dark-haired man was incredibly handsome—Amy recalled seeing his picture once or twice—and he smiled down at Oliver with quiet warmth. “We’re mates, me and Mick Dundee,” he said in a very thick and rhythmic down-under accent.
“Wow!” Oliver shouted.
The visitor chuckled and ruffled the boy’s hair. Then he noticed Ashley, who was standing shyly nearby, holding her beloved cat and looking up at the company with wide eyes.
“My name is Ashley Ryan,” she said solemnly. “And this is my cat, Rumpel. That’s short for Rumpelteazer.”
Amy was about to intercede—after all, this man hadn’t even had a chance to introduce himself yet—but before she could, he reached out and patted Rumpel’s soft, striped head.
“Ah,” he said wisely. “This must be a Jellicle cat, then.”
Ashley’s answering smile was sudden and so bright as to be blinding. She’d named Rumpel for one of the characters in the musical Cats: Tyler had taken her to see the show at Seattle’s Paramount Theater several months before his death. Ever since, the play had served as a sort of connection between Ashley and the father she had loved so much.
“Harry Griffith,” the man said, solemnly offering his hand to Ashley in greeting. He even bowed, ever so slightly, and his mouth quirked at one corner as he gave Amy a quick, conspiratorial glance. “I’m very glad to meet you, Ashley Ryan.”
Amy felt herself spinning inwardly, off balance, like a washing machine with all the laundry wadded up on one side of the tub. She reached out, resting one hand against the edge of the picnic table.
Harry’s indigo eyes came back to her face, and she thought she saw tender amusement in their depths. He wore his expensive clothes with an air only a rich and accomplished man could have managed, and Amy concluded that he was used to getting reactions from the woman he encountered.
It annoyed her, and her voice was a little brisk when she said, “Hello, Mr. Griffith.”
His elegant mouth curved slightly, and the ink-blue eyes danced. “I’m very glad to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Ryan. But since Tyler was one of my best friends, I’d be more comfortable having you call me Harry.”
“Harry.” The name came out of Amy’s mouth sounding like primitive woman’s first attempt at speech. “My name is Amy.”
“I know,” Harry answered, and, oddly, his voice affected Amy like a double dose of hot-buttered rum, finding its way into her veins and coursing through her system. Leaving her dizzy.
“S-sit down,” Amy said, gesturing toward the picnic table.
“I’d like that,” Harry replied. “But first I’d better tell you that there’s a man in coveralls out front, ringing your doorbell.”
Debbie’s cousin Max, no doubt. Although she knew intuitively that she wouldn’t need protection from a make-believe dishwasher repairman, Amy was relieved to have something to do besides standing there feeling as if she were about to topple over the edge of a precipice.
“Please,” Amy said. “Make yourself at home. I’ll be right back.” As she hurried into the house, she couldn’t help remembering what Tyler had said, that she was meant to marry Harry Griffith and have two children by him. She was glad no one else could possibly know about the quicksilver, heated fantasies that idea had produced.
Sure enough, she found Debbie’s cousin peering through the glass in the front door.
She opened it. “Max? Listen, you really don’t need—”
“Can’t be too careful,” the balding middle-aged man said, easing past Amy with his toolbox in hand. Then, in a much louder voice, he added, “Just show me to your dishwasher, and I’ll make short order of that leak.”
“You do understand that the dishwasher isn’t broken?” Amy inquired in a whisper as she led the way to the kitchen.
He replied with a wink, set his toolbox in the center of the table, took out a screwdriver and went right to work.
Amy drew three or four deep breaths and let them out slowly before pushing open the screen door and facing Harry Griffith again.
He had already won over both the kids; Ashley was beaming with delight as he pushed her higher and higher in the tire swing Tyler had hung from a branch of the big maple tree a few years before. Oliver was waiting his turn with uncharacteristic patience.
Amy had a catch in her throat as she watched the three of them together. Until that moment, she’d managed to kid herself that she could be both mother and father to her children, but they were blossoming under Harry’s attention like flowers long-starved for water and sunlight.
She watched them for a few bittersweet moments, then went to the grill to check the salmon. The sound of her children’s laughter lifted her heart and, at the same time, filled her eyes with tears.
Amy was drying her cheek with the back of one hand when both Oliver and Ashley raced past, arguing in high-pitched voices.
“I’ll do it!” Oliver cried.
“No, I want to!” Ashley replied.
Rumpel wisely took refuge under the rhododendron beside the patio.
“What…?” Amy turned to see Harry Griffith standing directly behind her.
He shrugged and grinned in a way that tugged at her heart. “I didn’t mean to cause a disruption,” he said. “I guess I should have gone back to the car for the cake myself, instead of sending the kids for it.”
Amy sniffled. “Did you know Tyler very well?” she asked.
Harry was standing so close that she could smell his after-shave and the fabric softener in his sweater, and together, those two innocent scents caused a virtual riot in her senses. “We spent the better part of a year together,” he answered. “And we kept in touch, as much as possible, after high school and college.” He paused, taking an apparent interest in the fragrant white lilacs clambering over the white wooden arbor a few yards away. “I probably knew Ty better than most people—” Harry’s gaze returned to her, and her heart welcomed it “—and not as well as you did.”
Smoothly, one hand in the pocket of his tailored gray slacks, Harry reached out and, with the pad of his thumb, wiped a stray tear from just beneath Amy’s jawline. Before she could think of anything to say, the kids returned, each carrying one end of a white bakery box.
Harry thanked them both in turn, making it sound as though they’d smuggled an important new vaccine across enemy lines.
“I guess we’d better eat,” Amy said brightly. “It’s getting late.”
Oliver and Ashley squeezed in on either side of Harry, leaving Amy alone on the opposite bench of the picnic table. She felt unaccountably jealous of their attention, suddenly wanting it all for herself.
“Mom says you and Dad were buddies,” Oliver announced, once the salmon and potato salad and steamed asparagus had been dealt with. He was looking expectantly at their guest.
Harry put his hand on Oliver’s wiry little shoulder. “The very best of buddies,” he confirmed. “Tyler was one of the finest men I’ve ever known.”
Oliver’s freckled face fairly glowed with pride and pleasure, but in the next instant he looked solemn again. “Sometimes,” he confessed, with a slight trace of the lisp Amy had thought he’d mastered, “I can’t remember him too well. I was only four when he…when he died.”
“Maybe I can help you recall,” Harry said gently, taking a wallet from the hip pocket of his slacks and carefully removing an old, often-handled snapshot. “This was taken over at Lake Chelan, right here in Washington State.”
Ashley and Oliver nearly bumped heads in their eagerness to look at the picture of two handsome young men grinning as they held up a pair of giant rainbow trout for the camera.
“Your dad and I were seventeen then.” Harry frowned thoughtfully. “We were out in the rowboat that day, as I recall. Your Aunt Charlotte was annoyed with us and she swam ashore, taking the oars with her. It was humiliating, actually. An old lady in a paddleboat had to come out and tow us back to the dock.”
Amy chuckled, feeling a sweet warmth flood her spirit as she remembered Ty telling that same story.
After they’d had some of Harry’s cake—they completely scorned the éclairs—Amy sent both her protesting children into the house to get ready for bed. She and Harry remained outside at the picnic table, even after the sun went down and the mosquitoes came and the breeze turned chilly.
“I’m sorry I didn’t make it to Ty’s funeral,” he said, after one long and oddly comfortable silence. “I was in the outback, and didn’t find out until some three weeks after he’d passed on.”
“I wouldn’t have known whether you were there or not. I was in pretty much of a muddle.” Amy’s voice went a little hoarse as the emotional backwash of that awful day flooded over her.
Harry ran his fingers through his hair, the first sign of agitation Amy had seen him reveal. “I knew the difference,” he said. “I needed to say goodbye to Tyler. Matter of fact, I needed to bellow at him that he had a hell of a nerve going and dying that way when he was barely thirty-five.”
“I was angry with him, too,” Amy said softly. “One day he was fine, the next he was in the hospital. The doctor said it would be a routine operation, nothing to worry about, and when I saw Ty before surgery, he was making jokes about keeping his appendix in a jar.” She paused, and a smile faltered on her mouth, then fell away. She went on to describe what happened next, even though she was sure Harry already knew the tragic details, because for some reason she needed to say it all.
“Tyler had some kind of reaction to the anesthetic and went into cardiac arrest. The surgical team tried everything to save him, of course, but they couldn’t get his heart beating again. He was just…gone.”
Harry closed warm, strong fingers around Amy’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he said.
One of the patio doors slid open, and Amy looked up, expecting to see Ashley or Oliver standing there, making a case for staying up another hour. Instead, she was jolted to find cousin Max, complete with coveralls and toolbox.
Amy was horrified that she’d left the man kneeling on the kitchen floor throughout the evening, half his body swallowed up by an appliance that didn’t even need repairing. “Oh, Max…I’m sorry, I—”
Max waggled a sturdy finger at her. “Everything’s fine now, Mrs. Ryan.” He looked at Harry and wriggled his eyebrows, clearly stating, without another word, that he had sized up the dinner guest and decided he was harmless.
In Amy’s opinion, Max couldn’t have been more wrong. Harry Griffith was capable of making her feel things, remember things, want things. And that made him damn dangerous.
“Mr. Griffith was just leaving,” she said suddenly. “Maybe you could walk him to his car.”
Harry tossed her a curious smile, gave his head one almost imperceptible shake and stood. “I’ve some business to settle with you,” he said to Amy, “but I guess it will keep until morning.”
Amy closed her eyes for a moment, shaken again. She knew what that business was without asking, because Tyler had told her. This was all getting too spooky.
Harry was already standing, so Amy stood, too.
“It’s been a delightful evening,” he said. “Thank you for everything.”
His words echoed in Amy’s mind as he walked away to join Max. It’s been a delightful evening. She wasn’t used to Harry’s elegant, formal way of speaking: Tyler would have swatted her lightly on the bottom and said, Great potato salad, babe. How about rubbing my back?
“You’re making me sound like a redneck,” a familiar voice observed, and Amy whirled to see Tyler sitting in the tire swing, grinning at her in the light of the rising moon.
She raised one hand, as if to summon Harry or Max back, so that someone else could confirm the vision, then let it fall back to her side. “It’s true,” she said, stepping closer to the swing and keeping her voice down, so the kids wouldn’t think she was talking to herself again. “Don’t deny it, Ty. You enjoyed playing king of the castle. In fact, sometimes you did everything but swing from vines and yodel while beating on your chest with both fists.”
Tyler, or his reflection, raised one eyebrow. “Okay, so I was a little macho sometimes. But I loved you, Spud. I was a good provider and a faithful husband.”
Instinct, not just wishful thinking, told Amy that Ty’s claim was true. He’d been the ideal life partner, except that he’d thrown the game before they’d even reached halftime.
“Go ahead, gloat,” Amy said, folding her arms. “You told me Harry Griffith would turn up, and he did. And he said something about discussing business with me tomorrow, so you’re batting a thousand.”
Tyler grinned again, looking cocky. “You thought you were dreaming, didn’t you?”
“Actually, no,” Amy said. “It’s more likely that you’re some sort of projection of my subconscious mind.”
“Oh, yeah?” Tyler made the swing spin a couple of times, the way he’d done on so many other summer nights, before he’d single-handedly brought the world to an end by dying. Somewhere in that library of albums inside the house, Amy had a picture of him holding an infant Ashley on his lap while they both turned in a laughing blur. “How could your subconscious mind have known Harry was about to show up?”
Amy shrugged. “There are a lot of things going on in this world that we don’t fully understand.”
“You can say that again,” Tyler said, a little smugly.
He still couldn’t resist an opportunity to be one up on the opposition in any argument, Amy reflected, with affection and acceptance. It was the lawyer in him. “Debbie’s theory is that you represent some unspoken wish for love and romance.”
Tyler laughed. “Unspoken, hell. I’m telling you straight out, Spud. You’re not going to find a better guy than Harry, so you’d better grab him while you’ve got the chance.”
Only then did Amy realize she hadn’t felt an urge to fling herself at Tyler, the way she had before. The revelation made her feel sad. “Doesn’t it make you even slightly jealous to think of me married to someone else?”
Amy regretted the words the instant she’d spoken them, because a bereft expression shadowed Tyler’s handsome features for several moments.
“Yes,” he admitted gruffly, “but this is about letting go and moving on. Think of me as a ghost, or a figment of your imagination, whatever works for you. As long as you get the message and stop marking time, it doesn’t matter.”
“Are you a ghost?”
Tyler sighed. “Yes and no.”
“Spoken like a true lawyer.”
He reached out one hand for her, as he would have done before, but once again he pulled back. He didn’t smile at Amy’s comment, either. “I’m not a specter, forced to wander the earth and rattle chains like in the stories they used to tell at summer camp,” he told her. “But I’m not an image being beamed out of your deeper mind, either. I’m just as real as you are.”
Amy swallowed hard. “I don’t understand!” she wailed in a low voice, frustrated.
“You’re not supposed to,” Tyler assured her gently. “There’s no need for you to understand.”
Amy stepped closer, needing to touch Tyler, but between one instant and the next he was gone. No fadeout, no flash, nothing. He was there and then he wasn’t.
“Tyler?” Amy whispered brokenly.
“Mom?” Ashley’s voice made Amy start, and she turned to see her daughter standing only a few feet behind her, wearing cotton pajamas and carrying her favorite doll. “Did Mr. Harry go home?”
Apparently Ashley hadn’t heard her mother talking to thin air, and Amy was relieved. She reached out to stop the tire swing, which was still swaying back and forth in the night air.
“Yes, sweetheart,” she said. “He’s really a nice man, isn’t he?”
Ashley nodded gravely. “I like to listen to him talk. I wish he was still here, so he could tell us a kangaroo story.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know any,” she suggested, distracted. If Tyler had known what she was thinking earlier, had he also discerned that his widow felt a powerful attraction to one of his best friends?
“Sure, he does,” Ashley said confidently as they stepped into the kitchen together. Amy closed and locked the sliding door. “Did you know they have yellow signs in Australia, with the silhouette of a kangaroo on them—like the Deer Crossing signs here?”
Amy turned off the outside lights and checked to make sure all the leftovers had been put away. The dishwasher showed no signs of Max’s exploratory surgery. “No, sweetheart,” she said, standing at the sink now and staring out the window at the tire swing. It was barely visible in the deepening darkness. “I didn’t know that. I guess it makes sense, though. Off to bed now.”
“What about the story?”
Amy felt tears sting her eyes as she stared out at the place where Tyler had been. That was what her life was these days, it seemed, just a place where Tyler had been.
Harry sat on the stone bench beside Tyler’s fancy marble headstone, his chin propped in one palm. “Damn it, man,” he complained, “you didn’t tell me she was beautiful. You didn’t say anything about the warm way she laughs, or those golden highlights in her hair.” He sighed heavily. “All right,” he conceded. “I guess you did say she was a natural wonder, but I thought you were just talking. Even the Christmas cards didn’t prepare me…”
He stood, tired of sitting, and paced back and forth at the foot of Tyler’s grave. It didn’t bother him, being in a cemetery at night. He wasn’t superstitious and, besides, he’d been needing this confrontation with Tyler for a good long time.
“You might have stuck around a few more years, you know!” he muttered, shoving one hand through his usually perfect hair. “There you were with that sweet wife, those splendid children, a great career. And what did you do? In the name of God, Tyler, why didn’t you fight?”
The only answer, of course, was a warm night wind and the constant chirping of crickets.
Harry stopped his pacing and stood with one foot braced against the edge of the bench, staring down at the headstone with eyes that burned a little. “All right, mate,” he said softly, hoarsely. “I know you probably had your reasons for not holding on longer—and that’s not to say I won’t be wanting an accounting when I catch up with you. In the meantime, what’s really got under my skin is, well, it’s Amy and those terrific kids.”
He tilted his head back and looked up at the moon for a long time, then gave a ragged sigh. “We were always honest with each other, you and I. Nothing held back. When I laid eyes on that woman, Ty, it was as though somebody wrenched the ground out from beneath my feet.”
While the damning words echoed around him, Harry struggled to face the incomprehensible reality. He hadn’t been with Amy Ryan for five minutes before he’d started imagining what it would be like to share his life with her.
He hadn’t thought of taking Amy to bed, though God knew that would be the keenest of pleasures. No, he’d pictured her nursing a baby…his baby. He’d seen her running along the white sand on the beach near his house in northern Queensland, with Ashley and Oliver scampering behind, and he’d seen her sitting beside him in the cockpit of his jet.
This was serious.
He touched his friend’s headstone as he passed, and started toward the well-lighted parking lot. “If you know what’s good for you, Harry,” he muttered to himself, “you’ll give the lady her money and then stay out of her way.”
Harry got behind the wheel of his rented vehicle and started the engine. Nothing must be allowed to happen between him and Amy Ryan, and the reason was simple. To touch her would be to betray a man who would have trusted Harry with his very life.
3
Amy didn’t sleep well that night. She was filled with contradictory feelings; new ones and old ones, affectionate and angry ones. She was furious with Tyler for ever dying in the first place, and with Harry Griffith for thawing out her frozen emotions. She was also experiencing a warmth and a sense of pleasant vulnerability she’d never expected to know again.
After Oliver and Ashley had gone to camp, Amy didn’t put on a power suit and go out to network with half a dozen potential clients as she normally would have done. Instead, she wore jeans and a pastel blue sun top and pulled her heavy shoulder-length hair back into a ponytail. She was in the spacious room that had once been Tyler’s study, balancing her checkbook and listening with half an ear to a TV talk show, when the telephone rang.
Amy pushed the speaker button. “Hello?”
Harry’s smooth, cultured voice filled the room. “Hello, Amy. It’s Harry Griffith.”
“I know,” Amy answered automatically, before she’d had a chance to think about the implications of those two simple words. She laid down her pen and closed the checkbook, feeling vaguely embarrassed. She wanted to say something witty, but of course nothing came to mind; in an hour or a day or a week, when it was too late, some smidgen of clever repartee would come to mind in a flash.
“I enjoyed last night’s visit with you and the children,” he went on, and Amy leaned back in her chair, just letting that wonderful voice roll over her, like warm ocean water. “Thank you for inviting me, Amy.”
Amy closed her eyes, then quickly opened them again. She needed to be on her guard with this man, lest she say or do something really foolish. “Uh…yes…well, you’re very welcome, of course.” That was really brilliant, Ryan, she added to herself.
“I’d like to return the favor, if I might. I’ve made an appointment to look at a rather unique house over on Vashon Island tomorrow, and I could really use some company—besides the real estate agent, I mean. Would you and Ashley and Oliver care to go out and offer your opinion of the place?”
Amy’s heart warmed as she thought how her son and daughter would enjoy such an outing, especially when it meant close contact with Harry. She wasn’t exactly averse to the idea herself, though she couldn’t quite admit that, even in the privacy of her own soul.
“It would give you and me a chance to discuss that business you mentioned last night.” That was the best attempt at setting up a barrier Amy could manage.
Harry sighed. “Yes, there is that. Shall I pick the three of you up tomorrow, then? Around nine?”
A sweet shiver skittered down Amy’s spine. “Yes,” she heard herself say. But the moment Harry rang off, she wanted to call him back and say she’d changed her mind, she couldn’t possibly spend a day on Vashon. She would tell him she had to clean the garage or prune the lilac bushes or something.
Only she had no idea where to reach the charming Mr. Griffith. He hadn’t left a number or mentioned the name of a hotel.
Feeling restless, Amy pushed the microphone button on the telephone and thrust herself out of her chair. So much for balancing her checking account; thanks to Harry’s call, she wouldn’t have been able to subtract two from seven.
Amy paced in front of the natural rock fireplace, wondering where all this unwanted energy had come from. For two years, she’d been concentrating on basic emotional survival. Now, all of the sudden she felt as though she could replaster every wall in that big colonial house without even working up a sweat.
She dialed Debbie’s private number at the counseling center.
“I’m going crazy,” she blurted out the moment her friend answered.
Debbie laughed. “Amy, I presume? What’s happened now? Have you been visited by the ghost of Christmas Weird?”
Amy gave a sigh. “This is serious, Debbie. Harry Griffith just called and invited me to go to Vashon Island with him tomorrow, and I accepted!”
“That is terrible,” Debbie teased. “Think of it. After only two years of mourning, you’re actually coming back to life. Quick, head for the nearest closet and hide out until the urge passes!”
Rolling her eyes and twisting the telephone cord around her index finger, Amy replied, “Will you stop with the irony, please? Something very strange is going on here.”
Debbie’s voice became firm, reasonable. She had become the counselor. “I know a crazy person when I see one, Amy, and believe me, you’re completely sane.”
“I saw Tyler again last night,” Amy insisted. “He was sitting in the backyard swing.”
“Your deeper mind is trying to tell you something, Ryan. Pay attention.”
“You’ve been a tremendous help,” Amy said with dry annoyance.
Debbie sighed philosophically. “There go my fond hopes of writing a best-selling book, becoming the next self-help guru and appearing on Oprah.”
“Debbie.”
“Just relax, Amy. That’s all you have to do. Stop analyzing everything and just take things one day at a time.”
Amy let out a long breath, knowing her friend was right. Which didn’t mean for one moment that she’d be able to apply the information. “By the way, thanks for sending your cousin Max over last night. My virtue is safe.”
Debbie chuckled. “Too safe, methinks. Talk to you later.”
Amy said goodbye and hung up. She went into the kitchen and turned on the dishwasher. Almost immediately, water began to seep out from under the door.
“Great,” she muttered.
As the rest of the day passed, Amy discovered that her normal tactics for distracting herself weren’t working any better than the dishwasher. She had absolutely no desire to contact prospective clients, make follow-up calls or update her files.
At two o’clock, a serviceman came to repair the damage Max had unwittingly done to the dishwasher. Amy watched two soap operas, having no idea who the characters were or what in the world they were talking about. She was relieved when it was finally time to pick the kids up at day camp.
The announcement that Harry had invited the three of them to spend the next day on the island brought whoops of delight from Oliver and a sweet smile from Ashley.
After those reactions, Amy could not have disappointed her children for anything.
That night in bed, she tossed and turned, half hoping Tyler would appear again so she could give him a piece of her mind. Of course, she reasoned, he probably was a piece of her mind.
When the first finger of light reached over the mountains visible from Amy’s window, Oliver materialized at the foot of her bed. He scrambled onto the mattress and gave a few exuberant leaps.
“Get up, Mom! You’ve only got four hours to get beautiful before Harry comes to pick us up!”
Amy pulled the covers over her head and groaned. “Oliver, children have been disowned for lesser offenses.”
Oliver bounded to the head of the bed and bounced on his knees, simultaneously dragging the blankets back from Amy’s face. “This is your big chance, Mom,” he argued. “Don’t blow it!”
Shoving one hand through her rumpled hair, Amy let out a long sigh. “Trust me, Oliver—while I may appear hopeless to you, I have not quite reached the point of desperation.”
The words were no sooner out of her mouth when Tyler’s accusation echoed in her mind. You’re not happy.
The assertion would have been much easier to deal with if it hadn’t been fundamentally true. Amy loved her children, and she found her work at least tolerable. She had good health, a nice home and plenty of money.
Those things should have been enough, to her way of thinking, but they weren’t. Amy wanted something more.
By the time nine o’clock rolled around, Amy had put on jeans and a navy sweater with red, white and yellow nautical designs. She wore light makeup and a narrow white scarf to hold her hair back from her face.
“Am I presentable?” she whispered to Oliver with a twinkle in her eyes, when the doorbell sounded.
Oliver had already rushed to answer the door, but Ashley examined her mother with a pensive frown and then nodded solemnly. “I suppose you’ll do,” she said.
When Amy saw Harry standing there on the porch, looking rakishly handsome even in jeans and a white cable-knit sweater, her heart raced the way it did when she was trying to get in step with a revolving door.
His too-blue eyes swept lightly over Amy, but with respect rather than condescension. “G’day,” he said.
The children’s laughter seemed to startle Harry, though he looked suavely good-natured, as usual.
“You sounded like Crocodile Dundee again,” Amy explained with an amused smile. She was grateful to the children for lightening up the situation; if it had been left to her, she probably wouldn’t have been able to manage a word. “Come in.”
Harry smiled at the kids and rumpled Oliver’s hair. Then, as if he hadn’t already charmed the eight-year-old right out of her sneakers, he bowed and kissed Ashley’s hand. The effect was oddly continental, despite the child’s diminutive size.
Minutes later, after making sure that Oliver and Ashley’s seat belts were properly fastened, Harry joined Amy in the front seat.
“You’re quite competent at driving on the right-hand side of the road,” she remarked, strictly to make conversation, when Harry had backed the van out onto the quiet residential street. An instant later, Amy’s cheeks were flooded with color.
Harry’s grin could only be described as sweetly wicked. “I’ve spent considerable time in the States,” he responded after a time.
Amy ran the tip of her tongue over dry lips. With Tyler, there had always been so much to talk about, the words had just tumbled from her mouth, but now she felt as though the fate of the western hemisphere hung on every phrase she uttered.
Lamely, she turned to look out the window, all the while riffling through the files in her mind for something witty and sophisticated to say.
“Mom isn’t used to dating,” Oliver put in from the back, his tones eager and earnest. “You’ll have to be patient with her.”
Harry chuckled at Amy’s groan of mortification, then sent a seismic shock through her system by innocently touching her knee.
“It’s all right,” he assured her in his quiet, elegant, hot-buttered-rum voice. “Why are you so nervous?”
Why, indeed, Amy wondered. Maybe it was because she was really beginning to believe that a ghost had set her up for a blind date!
“Oliver was right on,” she said after a few moments of struggling to get her inner balance. “I’m not used to—socializing.”
Harry grinned, skillfully shifting the van into a higher gear and keeping to the right of the yellow line on the highway. “Dating,” he corrected.
Amy’s color flared again, and that only amused him more.
“No wonder Ty was so crazy about you,” he observed, keeping his indigo gaze on the traffic.
Foolishly pleased by the compliment, if mystified, Amy did her best to relax.
The lull obviously worried the children; this time it was Ashley who leaned forward to put in her two cents’ worth.
“Once Mom went out with this dude who sold real estate,” the little girl said sagely. “Rumpel bit his ankle, and the guy threatened to sue.”
Amy shook her head and closed her eyes, beyond embarrassment. Then she risked a sidelong glance at Harry. “Rumpel has always been an excellent judge of character,” she admitted.
Harry laughed. “All the same, I’ll watch my manners when the cat’s about.”
The thought of Harry Griffith not watching his manners made a delicious little thrill tumble through Amy.
Presently they arrived in west Seattle, and Harry took the exit leading to the ferry terminal. He paid the toll and drove onto the enormous white boat with all the savoir faire of a native.
Ashley and Oliver were bouncing in their seats, but Amy made them stay in the van until the boat had been loaded. Their eagerness carried a sweet sting; riding on ferry boats had been something they did with Tyler. He’d taken them from stem to stern and, on one occasion, even into the wheelhouse to meet the captain.
The four of them climbed the metal stairway to the upper deck, Oliver and Harry in the lead, and then walked through the seating area and outside. The wind was crisp and salty and lightly tinged with motor oil.
While Oliver and Ashley ran wildly along the deck, exulting in the sheer freedom of that, Amy leaned against the railing as the heavy boat labored away from shore.
She was only too conscious of Harry standing at her side, mere inches away. He was at once sturdy as a wall and warm as a fire on a wintry afternoon, and Amy was sure she would have sensed his presence even in a pitch-black cellar.
“Have you seen pictures of this place we’re going to look at?” she asked, and she sounded squeaky in her effort to keep things light.
Harry shook his head. “No, but the agent described it to me. Sounds like a terrific place.”
Amy swallowed. So far, so good. “You’ll be renting it, I suppose?”
“Buying,” Harry responded. “My company is opening offices in Seattle. I’ll be here about six months of the year.”
Amy had a peculiar, spiraling sensation in the pit of her stomach. “Oh.” She was saved from having to make more of that urbane utterance when Ashley and Oliver returned to collect Harry. They each took a hand, and in moments he was being led away toward the bow.
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