thought might see past the quiet exterior, but something always seemed to get in the way of it actually happening.
Cara had always been bright, beneath the shyness, and she’d gone away to get her master’s degree shortly before he and Hope had married. She’d been home for the wedding, but Gabe hadn’t seen her again until after Hope had vanished. Gwen had called her then, of course, to see if she had any idea where Hope was, or if she’d heard from her. She had, in fact, had a phone message from Hope that last morning, but it wasn’t much help, only an excited promise to call her back with big news, the biggest.
The call had never come.
Cara had immediately come home to help in the search. Gabe only vaguely remembered the quiet, withdrawn young woman’s departure several weeks later; he’d been too sunk in his own misery to worry overmuch about hers.
As he rose once more and headed for the large main salon of the boat, he shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d show up now, not after being the one to receive that much-belated postcard.
Cara had likely never given up on the possibility of finding Hope alive and well. Hope had always said Cara was the most staunchly loyal person she’d ever known. That she’d often said it while pointing out how in her view that accolade didn’t apply to him was something he tried not to dwell on. Hope’s interpretation of loyalty hadn’t quite meshed with his, and certainly not with the navy’s. Which was one of the reasons, although not the main one, that he was no longer in the uniform he’d once expected to wear for life.
He slid open the large, glass door to the salon. It moved with the well-balanced, smooth silence expected on any Redstone vessel, and the woman seated with her back to him on the deeply cushioned couch upholstered in a rich, slate-gray fabric that looked like suede, didn’t turn. For a moment he stood there, staring at the back of her head as sunlight streamed in through the glass.
Had her hair always been that rich, autumn-leaves color? He remembered it as just sort of brown. Long and straight, and plain. Maybe it was the sunlight, although he’d certainly seen her in the sun before. If she’d done something more than just cut it so that it fell in soft waves just to her shoulders, it was subtle, yet made a world of difference.
And then, as if she’d sensed his presence, she stood up, turned.
And stunned him.
The quiet little mouse was gone. This was the woman who’d left Mark speechless. This was a tall, perfectly curved, vibrant, auburn-haired woman dressed in a cool, pale green that reminded him of mint ice cream. It was luscious on a hot, Southern California day.
This was a woman who looked back at him confidently with bright blue eyes that had so often avoided his before. A woman who walked toward him with an easy grace quite unlike the awkwardly tall, quiet mouse, who had always seemed to be hesitant or hasty, depending on the circumstances.
“Gabe,” she said softly as she came to a halt before him.
Had her voice always been so low and husky? Did he even know, could he even remember? She had always been so quiet, at least around him; Hope had said she talked all the time when they were alone, so he’d assumed it was just him she wasn’t comfortable around. He’d even asked her once, on one of those days so long ago, why she didn’t like him. She’d blushed furiously, said she liked him fine.
“Cara,” he said finally. “You’ve…changed.”
“Well, I should hope so,” she said with amusement. “In eight years. You, on the other hand, naval officer or not, are still tall, dark and ramrod-straight Gabriel Taggert, aren’t you?”
He didn’t smile; Hope had teased him far too much about the military carriage that had been drilled into him early on for him to take the echoed comment lightly. More than once he’d been driven beyond irritation by her insistence that he learn how to “unbend,” as if the way he stood or carried himself meant he was rigid and inflexible in mind as well.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a moment of silence. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “You’re just repeating what she always said.”
“I know.” Something came into her voice then, a sort of regret. “I shouldn’t have said it. It took me a long time to realize she was really digging at you.”
His mouth quirked then. “Me, too.”
“I thought she was proud.” Those blue eyes, that he somehow hadn’t remembered as quite so vivid, lowered then, in a momentary reversion to the mouse of old. “I would have been,” she added softly.
The simple admission startled him, and to his surprise, moved him. “Thank you,” he said, not sure what else to say. This woman had been part of a life he’d lost long ago, yet she looked and seemed so different now that he wasn’t sure what to think of her at all.
She moved then, reaching for the small shoulder bag that matched the light green of her silky shirt. A gold chain glinted at the neckline, vanishing behind the first button. He wondered idly where it ended up, and sucked in a shocked breath as an image shot through his mind of some personal locket or charm resting gently atop breasts that were all woman.
He quashed the image instantly, feeling a bit as if he’d had a lustful thought about the proverbial girl next door. But he couldn’t deny the fact Cara Thorpe had filled out some. Nicely.
She removed something from a side pocket of the purse and held it out to him, thankfully unaware of the misfire of his imagination.
“Obviously, this is why I’m here.”
It was the postcard, he realized. And caught himself looking at it much as if it were a venomous snake he’d stumbled onto.
He couldn’t face it, not yet. So he looked at her hands instead. Long, slim fingers, neat, not-too-long nails finished with a subtle shine that spoke of care but not vanity. No ring, he noted, glancing at her left hand. Nor any sign of one that had been worn for any length of time.
She was exactly one month younger than Hope, he remembered; the two women had celebrated together at the halfway point between their birthdays every year. So she was thirty-seven now. He found it hard to believe, if she’d left mousehood behind very long ago, that she hadn’t been snapped up by some man. He couldn’t be the only one who’d noticed the curves. And the eyes. And the new, confident air.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come here, but I thought you’d want to…see it.”
He realized at her quiet words that he’d left her standing there with that damned thing in her hand for too long. He shifted his gaze to the card. The sight of Hope’s familiar scrawl, as unruly as she had sometimes been, sent a jab of the old ache through him.
With the sense that he was breaching a dam holding back a host of pain, a dam it had taken him years to build, he reached out and took it.
She’d managed it, Cara thought. He’d taken the card from her, and she’d managed to keep from touching him in the process. That was success, progress even, wasn’t it?
And for the moment, he was staring at the postcard in his hand, focused on it with that quiet intensity she’d never forgotten. She could look at him now, couldn’t she? He’d never realize, or if he did, he’d think she was just watching for his reaction.
As,
