Swept Away

She’d have panicked if he hadn’t spoken so gently, without belligerence.

“I don’t believe in casual…er…sex, Kurt.”

He studied her for a minute, and a look of pure pleasure settled on his face. “You needn’t worry. I assure you there’ll be nothing casual about it.”

“I’m sorry.”

He released a long breath. “I’m sorry, too. What time do you want to leave tomorrow morning? We eat breakfast at six-thirty.”

She stifled a smile of relief because she didn’t want to encourage him. “As soon after breakfast as possible. The hotel must have worried that I didn’t get back there last night.”

From his facial expression, you’d have thought he saw a Martian. “They don’t care, as long as you or somebody pays the bill. We’ll leave here at seven-thirty. If you don’t mind riding in the truck, I’ll drive you down to Interlaken.”

“Thank you, Kurt. For…for everything.”

He shrugged. “Maybe next time I’ll get lucky.”

Veronica walked into her room at the Hotel Europa in Interlaken, so-called because of its position between two lakes. Excited about her adventure but relieved that it had ended without mishap, she got the notebook she’d bought in the hotel’s small store and began to write. Kurt hadn’t interested her, but during their ride down the mountain and through a narrow pass to Interlaken, she’d developed compassion for him. Eligible though he was—and handsome, if your taste ran to his type—he couldn’t find a woman he wanted who would agree to live with his family in the home whose foundation his great-grandfather had built and that he refused to leave. The worst of it, to Kurt’s way of thinking, was that his brother couldn’t marry until he did. She recorded the events of the previous two days and put the tablet aside.

Time to move on. She walked out on her tiny balcony and looked at Lake Thunersee nestled in the bosom of an endless flower-filled meadow beneath the Jungfraujoch Mountain on which she’d skied. Why couldn’t she have shared it with Schyler? Here, in the most beautiful place she’d ever been, she was alone. She shrugged it off, as she’d always done, packed, paid her bill and took a taxi to the station. The taxi driver assured her that if the United States was full of women who looked like her, it must be paradise for a man. She took that with the proverbial grain of salt, not bothering to disabuse him of his assumption; she was already learning that it wasn’t the place but the person who counted most.

Her hotel in Geneva faced the train station. She dropped her bags inside her room door, went to the phone and called American Express.

“Yes, Miss Overton, we have a message for you. We don’t open mail, so you’ll have to pick it up here.”

A feeling of dread stole over her, but she blew out a heavy breath, called Swissair and in four hours was on her way to Pickett. She was eating lunch on the plane before she remembered her mail at American Express. It didn’t matter; Papa was the only person who knew her whereabouts, and as much as he hated to write letters, something had to be seriously wrong.

A week after her return home, she sat on the edge of her mother’s bed and leaned forward so she could understand the muffled words. She couldn’t make sense of them, except for the last.

“…find him. Find your father…please find him. Sorry.”

Days later, the services over, she and her stepfather began adjusting to life without Esther Overton. Veronica hated to leave him, but he insisted that he’d be happy with his memories, because Esther would always be with him.

Shortly after her return to Baltimore, she made a luncheon date with Enid. She had to talk to someone other than her stepfather.

“If she told you to find your birth father, you’d better do that,” Enid said. “She had a reason.”

“But I grew up thinking he…he deserted us. She said so herself. I don’t want to find him. I spent my whole life detesting him.”

Enid was adamant. “Maybe she wanted to right a wrong. How do you know? If that’s the last thing she said, you’d better do it. Get a private detective.”

“I…I suppose you’re right. Anyway, I promised her I’d do it. Uh…How’s…uh…Mr. Henderson these days? Still rolling heads?”

Enid pushed her glasses up on her nose. Since she’d had her face lifted, the bridge of her once prominent nose was considerably smaller, and her glasses no longer stayed in place. Veronica wished she’d get a pair that fit her nose.

“Mr. Henderson called several times just after you left. At first, he thought I was lying when I said I didn’t know where you were and that you’d taken leave from the agency. Veronica, he was distressed. Have you two been together…I mean…Is anything going on with the two of you? His reaction wasn’t what I’d expect of someone who only knew you casually.”

Veronica shook her head, knowing that Enid’s sharp eyes wouldn’t miss her discomfort. “There’s nothing between us, Enid.”

“But there could be?”

“Better to say there could have been.”

“My Lord! And he knows that, too, doesn’t he?”

Veronica nodded. “So it seems. It’s been good talking with you. Let’s…let’s see each other often. Okay? I’ve gotta run back down to Pickett and get what information I can about my birth father. Call you when I get back.”

She passed Jenny’s corner on the way to her train but didn’t expect to see the woman on that rainy day.

Bright sunshine relieved the dreariness of her task as she sat in what had been her parents’ bedroom shuffling through the papers she’d found in the bottom drawer of her mother’s dresser. Tension gathered within her as she stared at the picture of a happy threesome—herself at about age two sitting on her birth father’s lap and her mother smiling up at them. She stared at the likeness of the man her mother had begged her to find. Now she at least knew what he looked like, and she realized that she resembled him. She put the picture aside and searched further. Satisfied that she had enough information, she took out the few items she needed and closed the drawer. Her stepfather didn’t seem to have touched anything in the room or to have slept in it since losing his wife.

She went back to Baltimore, hired a private detective and gave him the photo and other information about her father, including his status as a Vietnam veteran. Six weeks later, the detective informed her that he had found a man who acknowledged being her father and who offered as proof the birth dates of her and her mother and when and where he’d lived with them as a family.

“He lives with his adopted son in Tilghman, Maryland, on a little fishing peninsula. Has a great place a few steps from the Chesapeake Bay. Nice guy, too,” the detective informed her.

Her hackles shot up, and she could feel her bottom lip struggling to stay in place. How dare he desert his own child and adopt someone else’s? The bitter taste of bile formed on her tongue, and she couldn’t wait for the chance to tell the man who sired her how she detested him.

“Something wrong?” the detective asked. “Not to worry, Miss Overton. He’s an okay guy.”

She took control of herself. “No. No. Everything’s fine, and you’ve done a great job.”

She jotted down the address and telephone number that the detective gave her, paid him and turned a new page of her life.

It wasn’t a journey she’d ever thought she’d make, and she’d as soon not have to do it now, but she’d promised, and it couldn’t be done except in person. A travel agent reserved a room for her in the town’s only hotel. She rented a Taurus, packed enough for an overnight stay and set out for Tilghman. Ordinarily she tended to speed, but on that morning she lumbered along at forty miles an hour. Killing time, postponing the inevitable and annoying other drivers. She crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, took Highway 50 toward Easton and turned into Route 32, which took her along a winding two-lane highway past the yacht haven known as St. Michaels. From there to Tilghman, she could see the bay on either side of the winding route, but with the sharp and frequent curves of the road, she didn’t dare enjoy the view.

Tilghman’s quaint quietness took her aback. What kind of man would content himself to live in such a remote place, in the middle of a body of water known to be wild in a storm? She checked into the little wood-frame two-story hotel, and it embarrassed her that the innkeeper witnessed her astonishment at the attractiveness of the room.

“It’s lovely and bright,” she said in an effort to make amends. She asked the woman whether she knew her birth father.

“Of course. Everybody in this place knows everybody else. It’s walking distance, but you can drive if you want to. Keep on down the street ’til you see a traffic light, turn left and walk to the end of the road. That white brick house is the one you want. Take you about ten minutes walking.”

She talked herself out of going immediately. After all, he might not be at home on a Saturday morning. She got her copy of the book, Beyond Desire, and her gaze fell on the scene in which Marcus Hickson succumbed for the first time to Amanda Ross Hickson’s lure and kissed her in spite of himself. She didn’t want to read about any other woman’s passion in a man’s arms, so she flung the book aside. She’d seen a restaurant next door, went in and ordered a crab cake, but her stomach churned in anticipation of the coming confrontation with her father, and she couldn’t eat it.

“Quit procrastinating, girl,” she admonished herself, got into her car and drove to 37 Waters Edge. She parked and looked out at the bay. Beauty in every direction in which she looked. Leaning back in the driver’s seat, she contemplated the difference between her birth father’s evident life style and the condition in which she’d grown up. The big white brick bungalow with its red shutters and sweeping and well-tended lawn was beautiful and, she knew, costly. She thought of her life on Cook’s Road in Pickett, so named because so many of the women who lived there worked in private service as cooks. In the days of her youth, their house hadn’t been painted, and they couldn’t afford the seeds and tools with which to create a lovely lawn. Her stepfather had given them all that he could, had filled their lives with love, and had sacrificed so much in order that she could have a better life. She had never faulted him for their near-poverty. But when she looked at the wealth before her, she had to work hard at not hating the man she would soon meet.

She put the car in Park, got out and strolled up the winding walkway. She had to shake off the trepidation that almost made her turn back, but her fingers trembled nonetheless when she knocked on the door.

Chapter 3

Now who could that be? He put his felt-tipped pens in the holder he kept for that purpose, slipped his feet into his house shoes and took his time walking to the front door. He had to finish the design of his New Age cable TV channel descrambler before he went to bed that night, and he didn’t welcome an intrusion. He knew his dad wouldn’t go to the door, because he didn’t let anything, especially unexpected visitors, interfere with his work. The brass knocker tapped several more times, less patiently than before. He opened the door.

He stared. Something akin to hot metal plowed through his belly, and an indefinable gut-rearing sensation winded him as if he’d just run a mile. She stared back at him.

“What are you doing here?” they asked each other in unison.

“I live here,” he managed, groping for his sanity. Where had she come from and why was she here? But he didn’t ask her, because he didn’t trust his eyes.

“You…you live here?” She checked a piece of paper that she held in her left hand. “Is this 37 Waters Edge?”