A Wish For Love (Gates-Cameron 2)

There were lights burning in the windows of the inn. Recently reopened for business, it wasn’t quite full, but several of the rooms were occupied, and the increasingly popular dining room had just closed after a busy evening. Silhouetted against the curtains in one downstairs-bedroom window, two shadows merged in what might have been a passionate kiss.

At the end of the garden path, Ian stood looking at that window. His usually hard, firm mouth curved into a very faint smile. He still couldn’t explain how Anna had been given a new life, an opportunity to love and to have the family she’d always wanted so badly, but he hadn’t for one moment begrudged her good fortune.

Maybe he had earned his lonely fate through the rebellion of his youth, but Anna was different. She was special. She deserved another chance. And it had been miraculously granted her. Ian could take pleasure in that, if nothing else.

An owl hooted above him, undisturbed by his presence. The light went out in the bedroom, leaving its occupants in the quiet intimacy of darkness.

Ian nodded in satisfaction, turned and faded silently into the shadows.

Alone.

1

February 16, 1896

My babies are two days old, diary. My twins. Ian and Mary Anna. How surprised, and how delighted James would have been to see them both, so healthy and so very beautiful. Already they resemble him, with their dark hair and dark eyes. Just looking at them is almost like having him with me. Almost.

I will not cry. I’ve spent so much of the past three months in tears. At first, I wondered if it were possible to go on without James. I did not believe I would ever smile again. And then I saw our babies.

No more tears. I must think of the children now. And of the inn, their legacy from the father who loved them so much, though he did not live to see them.

They were his final gift to me—born on Valentine’s Day. And though I know it sounds foolish, I made a special wish for them on the night they were born. I prayed that they would not leave this earth without finding the love my darling James and-I were fortunate enough to share. I wished that they would each meet someone who would love them absolutely, and that they would feel that same unconditional love in their own hearts. Would that I had the power to grant my own request for them.

Despite the pain I have endured since losing James, I pray my children will know a love like ours in their lifetime. The joy I found with James, and that I feel now when I gaze into the tiny faces of our children, is well worth any price I have paid.

October 10, 1996

BAILEY GATES didn’t intentionally eavesdrop on the private conversation between her brother and sister-in-law. She had been sitting alone for the past hour in the gazebo Dean had recently built in the garden of his ruralArkansas inn.

The inn was over a hundred years old, impeccably restored and listed on the register of local historic places. Dean had been faithful to the original designs in his renovations, making it easy for guests to believe they had stepped back in time. Even the new additions were designed to blend with the old styles. The gazebo, with its charmingly curved lines and fussy gingerbread, was a good example of Dean’s eye for historic detail. The tiny cottage where Bailey was staying was just finished, but it, too, looked as though it had been here for years.

Dean intended the little cottage to be the first of several grouped around the main building, for honeymooners and other guests who wanted extra privacy. When he and Anna had learned there was a baby on the way, he’d changed his plans for this first cottage. He’d decided to designate it as staff housing and make it available to the housekeeper and her daughter, freeing their rooms in the inn for use as a nursery.

And then Bailey had shown up unexpectedly on his doorstep only a couple of days after the cottage was completed, and he had insisted that she stay as long as she liked, since they wouldn’t be needing a nursery for several months.

She had accepted his offer gratefully—more gratefully than she’d allowed him to see, actually. She’d been here a week.

She desperately needed that private sanctuary just now.

It was a beautiful afternoon, bright and cloudless, warm enough for comfort in her light sweater and jeans. An open book lay in her lap, but she hadn’t been reading. She’d been looking at the old inn and dreaming of days gone by, imagining what it must have been like a hundred years earlier, back when life was simpler, more refined.

An antiques dealer, Bailey knew she tended to romanticize the past, mentally glossing over the hardships her ancestors had faced in daily life. Still, it was a harmless enough pastime for her to daydream of social graces, elegant clothing and dashing, adventurous men of honor.

The sort of men she found sadly lacking in the modern world, no matter how long she’d waited to find one.

She shuddered as her thoughts turned briefly to the last man she’d become involved with. She was still appalled that she had misjudged him so badly. So dangerously.

He’d seemed so nice. She’d never guessed at the darker side of him. Not until he’d begun to stalk her.

Her brother’s voice was a welcome distraction from that unpleasant reminder of her former gullibility. And her worry.

“Sweetheart, I thought you wanted to go on this vacation. We’ve discussed it for months,” he was saying.

Automatically, Bailey turned toward the sound. A row of huge azalea bushes, still green and leafy even late in October, shielded her brother and his wife from sight. Bailey opened her mouth to let them know she was there, but Anna spoke before Bailey could say anything.

“Oh, Dean, you know I want to go away with you,” Anna said, her musical voice soft with love for her husband of eight months. “It’s just… hard for me to leave here. When I think about our departure tomorrow morning, my chest tightens so much I can hardly breathe.”

Bailey frowned, surprised. Why was Anna so averse to leaving? Her sister-in-law had never seemed the least bit timid. Just the opposite, in fact.