Nikki, are you all right?”
The feminine voice pulled Nikki from the warmth of yesterday and back to the stark reality of the present. She withdrew her hands from her face and turned to see Bridget, her petite face creased with worry. “I’m fine.” Nikki forced a smile.
“I saw him, Nikki. I saw him talking to you. Are you sure you’re all right?”
Nikki nodded, releasing a shuddery sigh. She walked over to a nearby bench and sat down, afraid her legs wouldn’t hold her any longer. Bridget joined her on the bench, her feet dangling in the air like those of a small child.
Bridget had been born a little person at a time when people had no real understanding of dwarfism. She had come to the boardwalk twenty years ago and opened a pizza place. Here, in the surreal atmosphere and carnival gaiety, like so many of life’s outcasts, Bridget had found acceptance. She had also become a very special person in Nikki’s life.
“Did he say anything…about the baby?” she said, taking Nikki’s hand in hers.
Nikki shook her head and closed her eyes against the stab of pain that pierced through her…a pain of emptiness and loss. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve imagined seeing him,” Nikki said softly, looking at Bridget once again. “So many nights I fantasized about his return, rehearsed all the things I wanted to say—” She stopped in frustration, unable to explain how when actually facing him, she couldn’t think of anything except the reality of his presence. “He called me Nicolette Richards, so he knows about my marriage,” she said suddenly.
“If he knows about your marriage, maybe he knows about your divorce, too. Maybe after all this time, he’s finally come back for you. Maybe he’s come back to make up for the past.” Bridget, ever the romantic sighed at the very thought.
Nikki snorted her disbelief, feeling a slight hysteria sweep over her. “Even if he tried, there’s no way in hell that man could ever make up for the past,” she said with fevered finality.
Greyson Blakemore stood at the window of the second-story room that had been his childhood bedroom. He stared out into the distance where the bright-colored lights of the boardwalk lit the horizon.
Land’s End. At one time, he’d thought it was the only place on earth that mattered. It had been his salvation, his sanity.
He opened the window and felt the warm, salt-tinged air caress his face. Wafting on the breeze were the muted musical tones of the carousel’s calliope. As if the Pied Piper of Hamelin were using his mythical pipe to summon Grey, the haunting notes pulled at him, beckoned him.
As he stood at the window, with the sounds of the ocean crashing to shore mingling with the distant refrain of the boardwalk, he was thrust backward in time. Like the H.G. Wells’s time traveler in his fantasy machine, Grey chose the place and time in his past to revisit.
It was a mental exercise he’d indulged in before, and always when he did, he wound up with Nikki in his arms. She was seventeen and he was eighteen.
He closed his eyes, allowing the past full rein, letting his senses relive that particular moment of yesterday.
Her hair was a long tangle of dark curls that smelled of the sun and held the illumination of the moonlight that shone overhead. He’d held her before, kissed her before, but on this particular night, their embrace held the urgency of summer’s end, the knowledge that within two days he would leave for college. On this night, their urgency fed their passion and the passion fed on itself until they reached the point of no return. Even though they had made love a hundred times before, this time was different, already holding the bittersweet pangs of loneliness and separation.
Afterward, he’d stared at her in wonder, as always unable to believe that she was his. Her hazel eyes had taken on the gray hue of the shadows beneath the pier where they lay. Her skin was as warm as the sun-kissed sand. The moonlight caressed her face, emphasizing the straightness of her nose, etching each of her features in stark radiance. At the time, he’d loved her more than anything or anyone on earth. They’d talked of the future, planned their tomorrows…and after that night, he hadn’t seen her again…until this evening.
Nikki was as much a part of Grey’s past as those youthful carefree summer days. Yet he’d banished her from his very soul. But seeing her again had managed to stir up a strange mixture of emotions that weren’t easy to sort out.
“Greyson?”
He turned to see his mother standing in the doorway.
“We’re waiting dinner for you.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was so late.” He looked at his watch, surprised to see it was after eight o’clock. He smiled apologetically, knowing his mother always had dinner served promptly at eight.
This rigid adherence to customs and habits had been one of the things that had driven him to seek the freedom of the boardwalk so many years ago. There, dinner was whenever you got hungry. The days began in the afternoon and lingered until long into the night. There were no clocks, no schedules, no routines to keep. It was a far different world than the structured environment of his home life.
“Greyson, dear?”
He felt his mother’s hand on his sleeve and flushed, realizing his gaze was once again focused out his window. She joined him there, her light, expensive fragrance surrounding him.
“I blame myself, you know,” she said, making him turn to look at her curiously. “Your father always said I should have been more firm with you. I should have forbidden you to go to that place.”
“I don’t think anything you could have said or done would have kept me from the boardwalk.” He looked back out the window, seeing the lights of the Ferris wheel, remembering his child’s perception of a fantasy kingdom against the darkness of the ocean. “There was a kind of special magic there for me,” he said, irritated to recognize a certain wistfulness in his tone.
“But that’s all behind you now,” his mother said, patting his arm reassuringly. “That was the magic of childhood, but you’re a man now with responsibilities.”
Responsibilities…yes. For the past seven years, he’d carried much of the responsibilities of the Blakemore family business on his shoulders. And now he held the livelihood of the people at Land’s End in the palm of his hands.
He left the window, following his mother. He hesitated at the doorway of the room, catching one last glimpse of the brilliant colored lights reflecting off the ocean waves.
Yes, he’d always thought the boardwalk held some kind of magic. He remembered his youth there with Nikki with a longing that was, at times, physically painful. The bright lights, the gay music, the complete freedom…and Nikki. They had all combined to make the past so poignant, so sharply etched in his mind that he was trapped by that very image.
No matter where he’d gone, what he’d done, his thoughts had always drifted back here, to the boardwalk and Nikki. It was an illusion that had made everything else in his life pale by comparison.
Perhaps I needed to come back here, he thought as he followed his mother down the stairs to the dining room. Perhaps in order to finally come to terms with that past, find happiness in the future, he was going to have to dispel the illusion. He wondered if he was going to have to destroy the boardwalk.
Two
Nikki woke slowly, trying to hold on to her dreams, but it was like somebody trying to capture an echo. The sounds of morning intruded on her sleep—the banging of a hammer from someplace outside, the recurrent sloshing of waves acquainting themselves with the shore, Bridget yelling at her Swedish husband, Lars, to take out the garbage.
Dreams of yesterday were chased away, leaving behind a bitter aftertaste in her mouth and the need for a cup of hot coffee.
She stumbled out of bed and pulled on a floor-length silken robe, enjoying the sensual coolness