“This is my granddaughter, Elena.” With nudging palms, he ushered forth a preschooler who had black curls and his round gray eyes. She couldn’t be more than four. “Elena, this is Miss Hayley, the girl who sleeps in the treetops.”
The little girl’s eyes grew even wider. She nodded gravely, but she didn’t speak.
Hayley wasn’t sure she could speak, either. She had forgotten that Roland used to call her that. Suddenly she felt the wind in her hair, and the rough oak bark of her favorite perch against her cheek. She could almost see the blues and greens and browns of Foggy Valley Vineyard spreading out below her, the hills dipping and swelling and the rain on the green leaves sparkling under the summer sun.
She shook herself free of the trance. Old memories, even this one, were like ghosts. They would float in front of your eyes, and bring sights and smells and pains. But in the end, they were not real. Phantoms, with no more power than this fog.
“Would you come by the house and visit us later, Miss Hayley?” Roland’s face was more lined now, but as sweet as ever. “Later, when you’ve had time to rest? We could talk. Miranda has made a casserole.”
“Of course,” she said. “I’d love to catch up.”
Other people were waiting, so she contented herself with that. She pressed his hand and smiled her goodbye. And, touching his callused fingers, she felt a little stronger.
Over the next few minutes, she greeted half a dozen well-wishers. Some were vaguely familiar. Others were people who must have entered her father’s life long after she left it. She found her rhythm, and luckily everyone was on his best manners. No one asked overly personal questions. A couple of glances were full of pity, and she caught whiffs of the expected curiosity, but overall nothing she couldn’t handle.
Then she heard a voice so familiar it made her heart skip.
“Hayley?”
She looked to the left, and stopped breathing. She’d been doing so well. But now the facade of calm dignity fell from her shoulders like an unzipped, oversize dress.
There he was, the ghost of all ghosts, the man who had haunted her dreams for at least a decade—and still strolled into a stray one occasionally, even now.
Colby Malone.
A barrage of images assaulted her. Black-haired and blue-eyed. Expensive and dangerous and divine.
Seventeen years older, of course—thirty-five now, though it was hard to believe. But he was somehow shockingly the same. Tall, athletic, still not an inch of fat. Shoulders broader than before, broader than a dream could capture. The faint prettiness he’d possessed in youth had made way for a powerful virility.
“Hello, Hayley,” Colby said. His voice was deeper, too, more polished and yet more intense. And his jaw, though freshly shaven, hinted of a sexy stubble he’d have to work hard to repress.
He was, in some ways, a stranger. And yet, even under all this new virility, he was still the boy she’d known. He put out his hand. She twitched, as if she needed to avoid an invisible slap. A weak sensation passed liquidly through her knees—and her first truly coherent thought was, how could she ever have believed that what she felt for Greg Valmont was love?
Somehow, she held herself rigid. She was tougher than this. Naturally, she had considered the possibility of running into Colby Malone while she was here. But she hadn’t really believed he’d bother to drive forty minutes to attend the funeral of a man he had despised.
She’d told herself she would be fine, no matter what. She’d loved him, and then she’d hated him, and now she simply didn’t give a damn.
“Hello, Colby,” she said politely. She gave him exactly the same measured tone, practiced smile and cool hand she planned to give everyone here today. “How nice of you to come.”
He shook her hand. It pleased her to note that he seemed more uncomfortable than she was. As he should be.
She let go in precisely the correct number of seconds.
“How are you?” Her tone implied the question was perfunctory and didn’t require an answer. She didn’t leave time for one. “How is your grandmother? And Red and Matt? I know you must need to get back to San Francisco, but I do hope you’ll give them my best.”
And then she turned to the next person, who thankfully had begun to push closer, eager to be recognized.
She took a split second to be sure of the identification, then smiled. It was her music teacher, the kindhearted martyr who had listened to her murder scales every Tuesday afternoon for five years. A “frivolous” expenditure her mother had insisted on, like Gen’s ballet lessons—no matter how their father had roared.
“Ms. Blythe! I’m so glad to see you. You’ll be relieved to know I’ve given up the piano entirely, for the good of mankind.”
Ms. Blythe smiled, as if she might accept the light joke as the truth of Hayley’s feelings. But then she shook her head. With tears spilling down her plump cheeks, she wordlessly reached in and scooped Hayley into a hug.
With her chin pressed against Ms. Blythe’s fleshy shoulder, Hayley shut her eyes. It was so strange, being welcomed by these old acquaintances, almost as if she’d never left. But seventeen years. Didn’t they know seventeen years was too long, and she wasn’t the same person at all?
Didn’t Colby Malone know that? What could he possibly have hoped to gain by coming here? Didn’t he know that, if she’d wanted to see him, she could have called or written or come back to San Francisco anytime? If you wanted to communicate indifference, was there a more convincing method than seventeen years of silence?
Eyes still shut, she counted to three, telling herself that when she opened them, Colby Malone would be gone.
One. He had to know how she felt. The Malone boys had always been smart, all of them. Good judges of people—able to make you feel utter bliss or abject misery, with just a well-chosen word. Colby, especially, as the oldest, was the gang leader. Witty and caustic and clever.
Two. Surely someone that sharp could easily read between the lines and grasp how unwelcome he was here. He had to know.
Three. She opened her eyes.
He was gone.
CHAPTER TWO
COLBY GOT BACK to the house at Belvedere Cove just before dark. On a Wednesday evening, he expected to find his grandmother in the kitchen, whipping up the Diamondberry cheesecake that was her signature dessert at Diamante. The restaurant served it only straight from her kitchen, only Friday and Saturday nights.
They could have sold each piece a hundred times over, but Nana Lina knew better than to cheapen it by glutting the market. This way, every customer who succeeded in getting a slice felt as if he’d won the lottery.
But when Colby arrived, the kitchen was dim and undisturbed. The row of copper-bottomed pots lined up on the wall burned in the fading light that filtered in through the big back window. He glanced into the kitchen garden, but no figure, no shadow moved through the sunset-tinted herbs and grasses.
