Chapter 15

From the cockpit John watched the toylike shadow of his plane scudding swiftly across the landscape below. Morgana had advised him to look for the distinctive swimming pool in the shape of a diamond. He spotted it glimmering aqua blue behind the L-shaped house. This was Wildflower, where Cassie almost certainly must be.

He'd been frantic, trying to find her after she left him. He wanted to make sure she was all right. She'd looked so broken, so hurt. He needed to know that she wasn't planning on doing anything rash.

"Sure, John, I can check Flat Top," Ned Church assured him when John phoned the day after Cassie fled Malibu. "But I ain't heard she came back. I hear nearly all the local news, what with owning the only gas station in town and the store, too. Yeah, I'll drive up there right away. You say Bonnie Ott is looking after the garden? And the cat? Well, I'll talk with Bonnie, then. She'd know."

When it came, Ned's return call was less than encouraging.

"Nah, she ain't there. She ain't been there, either. It's deader'n a doornail up at Cassie's place. Bonnie Ott says she ain't heard nothing."

"Call me right away if Cassie shows up, will you, Ned? Or if Bonnie hears anything?"

"Sure, John. I'll bird-dog it."

Ned Church hadn't called again.

When John had finally reached her after a slew of frantic emails and equally frantic messages on her voice mail, Morgana had been alarmed.

"You mean she's gone? Just like that?"

"I'm afraid so," John said tersely.

There was a heavy silence on Morgana's end of the line.

"The worst of it is that she thinks that I'm part of a plot to get her to resume her career. She thinks you and Kajurian were in on it. No matter what I said, I couldn't convince her otherwise."

"You've got to," said Morgana. "You're the best thing that's happened to Cassie since the accident. Listen, John, you have to find her."

"If only I hadn't—"

"Don't blame yourself," interjected Morgana. "You did what you had to do, and it worked. You made her feel good about herself and got her down off that mountain. Find her and tell her the whole truth."

"I will," said John heavily. "If only she'll listen."

In the next few days, neither a worried Morgana nor Sharon heard from Cassie. Nor did Kajurian.

It was Kajurian who suggested Wildflower.

"Cassie loved that place before the accident," Kajurian said. "She used to say that the desert recharged her batteries. My bet is that she's gone there, maybe to check on the property, maybe to stay awhile."

John called Wildflower, but the phone had been disconnected long ago and it wasn't working now. That left only one thing to do and that was to fly there.

But first, making use of his connections as the owner of AirBridges and as a pilot, he called on a friend of his who was an air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.

What he learned there was something he was sure that Cassie did not know.

And that truth, along with everything else, was what John was going to tell her when he reached Wildflower.

* * *

She would sell Wildflower.

There was no point in keeping it. Why pay for maintenance on a place she wouldn't use? Once she got back to Flat Top Mountain, it would be good-bye to Wildflower forever.

Living so close to nature on the mountaintop had made Cassie aware of the natural rhythms of life. She saw that she would have to slough off the old season's skin before getting on with the new. Anyway, it was time. Time to sort through Kevin's clothes. Time to give Rory's things to someone who could use them.

So she spent her days engaged in the tasks that no one else could do for her, tossing out the remnants of her past life.

Kevin's walking stick was put aside. She'd take it to Flat Top Mountain, maybe use it to ease her way through the rugged part of the woods to the ginseng patch. Rory's parka went into a large plastic bag to donate to the Salvation Army. It was joined by Kevin's hiking boots, Rory's LEGOs, and her own evening dresses.

Every day was good-bye. She fell into bed at night physically and emotionally exhausted. She'd asked the gardener to arrange for the nearest grocery store to deliver a box of food, but she only picked at it. Trying not to think about John didn't work.

Why, why? Cassie asked herself this question over and over.

She had never questioned his sincerity or his honesty. Those qualities had seemed so real, a part of his character. She'd detected the goodness in him as soon as she'd laid eyes on him. So what had gone wrong? Why had John lied about who he was? Sadly she admitted to herself that she would probably never know the whole story. At this point she wasn't even sure she wanted to.

Three days after her arrival, she heard the heavy drone of a plane's engine as she dug through the kitchen cabinets, sorting out the pots and pans. There were some good-sized pots that she wanted to ship to Flat Top Mountain. They'd work for making jam; Gran's were old and dented.

The plane circled the house. Cassie stopped what she was doing to listen. It sounded as though the plane were about to land on her runway!

Was it an emergency? Once a Cessna had ruptured a fuel line, and the pilot had been forced to land at Wildflower. He'd been grateful to find an honest-to-goodness runway where he needed it.

Cassie wiped her hands on the housekeeper's smock she wore and ran through the breakfast room and out the French doors. She wasn't healed enough to handle possible flying emergencies as a matter of course. She never would be. Her heart pounded in her ears and her mouth went dry. She prayed that whoever was in that plane was going to be all right.

The plane banked, then spiraled into a slow, descending glide.

The swimming pool and its cabana occupied a neatly landscaped plateau directly behind the house, and beyond that the property sloped gently to another plateau where there was an asphalt landing strip. On the other side of the landing strip lay mountainous desert.

Running... she was running toward the runway. She kept her eyes glued on the plane, hoping that with her uneven gait she wouldn't trip. The plane was a small one, and it didn't seem to be in trouble. But she would never for the rest of her life be able to see a small plane landing without all the pain and tragedy of her own experience hitting her hard.

It was the moments before the plane's wheels touched ground that were the hardest for her. In her heart she was begging, Please, please, let it land, let it be all right, because imprinted on her brain was the picture of the runway rushing toward her, speeding by, and then the hell of knowing that something had gone wrong, that she wasn't going to land, and then the awful sensation of spinning, rolling...

* * *

John flicked his eyes across the instrument panel before lowering the flaps and maneuvering the airplane into a glide. The runway sped toward him, still in good condition though it hadn't been used in years. The wheels touched, smooth as butter. He'd always exulted in the sensation of takeoff, but he also liked the feeling of competence that a good landing gave him. He taxied the plane to the apron in front of the hangar and cut the engine.

And then he saw her, running frantically and with that funny little hitch because of her leg. Her hair was a tangle, burnished with golden highlights by the sun, and he couldn't wait to bury his fingers in it, to smell the fresh scent of her skin, to feel her delicate bones melt in his embrace.

"I love you, Cassie Muldoon," he said out loud, and then he got out of the plane.

* * *

The plane landed safely.

Cassie slowed to a walk, her pulse pounding in her throat, only now realizing how much her leg hurt. Her heart stopped hammering, and she drew a deep breath in relief. Whoever it was, he was safe. She wrinkled her forehead in consternation, wondering who this was and why he'd landed here. She was close enough to read the logo on the side of the plane. It said AirBridges. Something about the name sounded vaguely familiar, but she didn't know why.

She was only sixty feet away by this time, but the plane was situated on the hangar apron so that her view of the pilot inside was blocked. And then the door opened, the pilot stepped out and down, and he turned toward her.

John Howard Bridges.

Cassie stood as though rooted to the spot. As much as she'd thought about him and cried over him, she'd never thought to see him here at Wildflower. Not in her wildest imaginings would she have dreamed that he would swoop down upon her from the sky. She hadn't even known he knew how to pilot a plane.

If she'd believed she could outrun him, she would have run. If she'd thought she could force him to get back into that plane and leave, she would have forced him. She could do neither of those things.

"Cassandra," he said. His voice brought back memories of another time and place when he had said that he would call her by that name when what he was going to say was important and real and true and meant only for her.

But then he'd lied.

"Get out of here," she said.

"No, Cassie, we have to talk."

She turned her back on him and began walking up the slope. "I told you I don't want to."

"I'm not accepting that." He grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face him.

"There's an old mountain saying that I heard from Gran. It goes, 'You fooled me once, shame on you. You fooled me twice, shame on me.' I'm not going to be fooled twice, John Bridges."

"I told you why I didn't tell you my whole name. And I want to explain why I didn't tell you that I'm not a photographer. Does the plane give you any clue?"

"No. Should it?" She pulled away and kept walking.

They'd reached the swimming pool by this time. "Think, Cassie."

She rushed through the French doors with John right behind her.

He flung a file folder on the breakfast-room table. "If you won't talk, at least read that."

Her anger flared suddenly. "I don't want to read anything, I don't want to talk about anything. Don't you understand?"

"What's in that folder is key. It's a file I obtained from the National Transportation Safety Board. Read it, Cassie." His voice was firm, his eyes steady.

The National Transportation Safety Board was no stranger to Cassie. It was the agency that investigated airplane crashes. She'd talked with their people at length after the accident. Later she'd blocked them and their investigation from her mind as much as possible. But now John Howard Bridges was asking—no, demanding—that she read this file.

"I'm in no mood for this," she said, suddenly exhausted.

She turned her back on John and his folder and walked from the breakfast room to the living room. A wide grouping of sectional sofas covered in soft chamois took up one side of the space. Kevin had picked out this particular furniture grouping. In addition, he had chosen the round revolving cocktail table topped by a small basalt sculpture entitled Mother and Child. He'd fallen in love with the sculpture, he'd said, because it reminded him of Cassie with Rory. This room had been the center of their family life. There was no place at Wildflower that reminded Cassie more of her husband and son.

John was silent, but she felt his presence behind her.

"You don't have to read the file," he said softly. "I'll tell you what it says."

A chill swept through her. "Why?" She couldn't stop herself from asking, even though she was sure she didn't really want to know.

"Cassie, it's about Kevin, but it will ease your mind."

She turned to him and saw his gaze, so caring and sympathetic, and once again she felt trust. She couldn't understand why she trusted him. How could she, after what happened? Yet in spite of everything, she did.

"Tell me," she said unevenly, sinking down on the edge of the sofa. John sat beside her and set the file folder on the table. He took both her hands in his, and his touch momentarily unnerved her. She made herself focus her attention on what he was saying.

"Cassie, Kevin wouldn't have survived the accident even if you hadn't lost control of the plane."

She gasped, went cold and tried to snatch her hands away. He held fast.

"The required autopsy report shows that Kevin died of a myocardial infarction, Cassie. He was dead of a massive heart attack before the plane hit the ground."

Her thoughts were transformed into pictures clicking through her memory one by one. Kevin slumped over the yoke, his face pasty in the blue light from the instrument panel. She couldn't tell if he was breathing or not. She'd touched him. His skin was clammy, and he didn't respond. Wondering if he was dead—but no, he couldn't be. He was too young to die.

"The heart attack killed him. Not the crash. Do you understand what I'm saying, Cassie? There is no way that you can consider yourself responsible for Kevin's death. No way at all."

"I—I—" But she couldn't talk. She couldn't speak. John released her hands, and she buried her face in them.

"There's always a pilot autopsy in a crash like yours. The autopsy report was released a couple of months after the accident. You could have had a copy if you'd requested it."

She lifted her head. "I wasn't thinking clearly afterward. I never thought to ask. It was the kind of detail Kevin would have seen to. You see, before the accident, I never had to do things for myself."

"I thought to check on it because I was curious and because I've heard of similar cases. You know how it is with pilots, don't you? We sit around airports and swap flying stories with our buddies."

"I didn't know you're a pilot," she said.

"Cassie, how could I tell you that flying is a part of my life? It's how I make my living."

She stared at him, speechless.

"I not only fly cargo planes from time to time, but I fly for business and pleasure in any one of a half-dozen other company planes like that one out there."

"You said you had family money."

"SeaBridges Shipping made my grandfather and father millionaires. With my interest in aviation, AirBridges was the natural extension of an existing business. I took over a struggling cargo airline and made it my life. I couldn't tell you I was John Bridges of AirBridges, not when you were in the state you were about flying. How could I watch you fall apart because you feared for me? I had to help you past your fear before I could tell you the truth." He studied her face anxiously.

Her eyes never left his. "That means I was wrong about Morgana! And Kajurian! You weren't... they weren't trying to get me to perform again!"

"No, Cassie," he said gently. "Morgana and Kajurian want only for you to be happy, whatever happiness means to you. If it means performing, all well and good. If it means never stepping on a stage again, that's fine, too. We all want the best for you."

"But I thought—oh, John. How could I ever have thought—. I was so shocked to find out there was no such person as John Howard that I was ready to accuse everyone of anything. How will I ever make it up to them?" She looked distraught.

"It's time to stop thinking of your life in terms of making things up to people," he reminded her. "Morgana and Kajurian are none the worse for this misunderstanding. What's important is that now you know the truth."

"The truth," she said slowly. Her eyes glazed in a look of ineffable sadness. "Thank you for telling me about Kevin, John. It does help. But Rory..." She bit her lip to stop the tears.

"I'm sorry about Rory, Cassie. Really so, so sorry." His expression was one of shared grief and pain. "It's one of those things that there's no understanding. I wish it hadn't happened to you. But Cassie, you have to stop looking backward and go forward now."

Cassie's eyes filled with tears, but John was right. She had to move on. All her guilt had accomplished nothing. It had held her down and held her back. Perhaps now she was ready to put the past behind her for good.

He watched the successive expressions flit across her face. Each side of her face was so different, each side so lovely. Tears like tiny diamonds quivered on the tips of her lashes. His heart went out to her in her grief. Because he loved her, he wanted to share that burden.

Never had he wanted to touch Cassie more than he did at that moment. Unsure of himself, he reached out and rested his fingers tentatively along the soft inside part of her wrist, and then before he knew it, she was in his arms, sobbing against his shoulder, and he was murmuring to her and kissing her and comforting her.

"I love you, my Cassie," he said tenderly after her sobs faded to hiccups. He hoped that she'd say she loved him, too, but she didn't.

Cassie's mind was overwhelmed with thoughts of the past. Here in this room, where Kevin and Rory were so much a presence, it was hard to detach herself. But the specter of the coming years loomed before her. There was no one to revolve around her now, and nothing to evolve, either. She couldn't face the prospect of a life spaced through with emptiness.

"Will you stay?" she said quietly to John. "It's late to be flying back to L.A."

His arms tightened around her. It was what he had hoped for. "Yes," he said gently. "I'll stay, Cassie. As long as you want me."

* * *

"You haven't been eating properly," John said, peering into the refrigerator.

Cassie shrugged. "I suppose not."

"Do you feel like eating an omelet? I'll whip one up." She was pale, and in the few days since he had seen her, her cheeks had lost some of their fullness so that shadows hid in their hollows.

"Sure," she said, busying herself by stacking the pots she'd left on the kitchen floor when she'd rushed to meet his plane.

She watched as he cooked, and they sat down to eat together in the breakfast room overlooking the pool.

"You're going to have to do better than that," he cajoled as she picked at her omelet.

"It's delicious," she said. "I'm just not hungry. I keep thinking about..."

"About what?"

"Kevin. Rory."

"What about them?" Maybe it would be good for her to talk it out.

Her face softened. "Rory had such a good sense of humor. He used to say funny things. Once I was baking a soufflé. I had to watch it through the glass oven door to make sure it didn't burn like the last one I'd made. I sat down in front of the door with my arms clasped around my knees, and while I was watching, Rory marched through the kitchen and said, 'Enjoying the show, Mom?'" She laughed in remembrance.

John smiled at her. "It's good for you to remember the happy things. You don't laugh enough."

Her expression became somber. "I suppose not. There are a lot of happy things that I could remember."

"I could help you. It doesn't bother me to hear you talk about Kevin and Rory. And I love it when you laugh."

She smiled across the table at him. It was so good to see him there. A warm feeling of friendship had settled over them. He watched in approval as she finished her omelet and drank the milk shake he made for her on the spur of the moment.

Later, when the sun had gone down, he suggested a swim in the pool. "Unless the water is too cold," he said. The air temperature fell swiftly after sundown here.

"It's heated," she said. "I turned the heater on to make sure it still works. I'm going to sell the house, John."

"Are you sure that's what you want?"

"Yes," she said, wanting to add that she planned to go back to Flat Top Mountain and stay there permanently. But something held her back—a wish, a hope, a longing that the two to them could have a future together. She didn't know how it would be possible. John's business was in L.A. She was sure he couldn't move to Flat Top Mountain to be with her. She was equally sure that she couldn't be happy in L.A.

They swam in the lighted pool, self-consciously staying at arm's length. John swam lap after lap, while Cassie merely paddled. In the back of their minds was the question: What happens when it's time to go to bed?

"I think I've had enough," John said finally, hoisting himself to the edge of the pool. Water glistened on his face, and it ran down his chest, diverted into rivulets by the curly hair there. Cassie averted her eyes from the revealing swimsuit he wore; she dared not look. Reflected light from the pool glimmered in his eyes, giving them depths of turquoise, azure, and cobalt blue. His eyes stirred a hungering passion in her, and she found that she could no longer bear the caress of the water on her skin.

Cassie climbed the pool ladder and tossed him a towel from a nearby chair. She wiped the water from her face, blotted her hair and wrapped her own towel around her waist. Her casual movements belied the heat rising within her.

Silently, each of them occupied with their own thoughts, they went in through the French doors. Cassie closed and locked the doors behind them.

He thought, We've slept together so many times. Will we sleep together tonight? Is this reconciliation or merely her way of saying good-bye?

She thought, I want his arms around me. I want the hot pressure of his thighs against mine, his breath heavy in my ear, his lips caressing my lips and my breasts, everywhere.

He followed her through the swaying shadows of the unfamiliar house until they reached the huge foyer where the magnificent spiral staircase led to the upper floor. One dim light burned, a night-light. Cassie reached for the wall switch to flick it off, and then, without warning, her left leg collapsed beneath her.

John saw her tremble and instinctively reached for her before her leg actually gave way, and then he was sweeping her into his arms as he would a child.

"My leg," she said.

"Does it hurt?"

"A little. It just gives way like that sometimes." She tried to hide her pain. "Maybe it was the running today, or the swimming. It's not a very reliable leg."

And then he was carrying her up the wide staircase, and she was looking dazedly down, down, through the stairwell, his heartbeat strong against her cheek, her wet hair splayed against his chest.

The upper story offered a profusion of doors. "Which one?" he asked.

She pointed to the master bedroom. And then he was kicking back the bedspread with one foot and depositing her with infinite care on the bed.

Exploratory fingers touched the scar below her left knee. Her calf muscle was tense and hard. John massaged it slowly, carefully, taking his time.

"Better?"

She nodded. When he stopped massaging, she struggled to sit.

"You'd better rest." His eyes were intent upon her, and there was no hiding the desire in their depths. He seemed mesmerized by her face, his gaze taking in every detail. Slowly, slowly, he lowered his mouth to hers, and she was waiting. Only his mouth touched her, but all of her yearned toward him. Yet he only kissed her, deepening it by degrees, making her hunger for him.

And then his fingertips were on her cheeks, drifting to her chin, feathering across her throat, delicately outlining her ear, winding in her wet hair.

"Cassie," he said unsteadily into the hollow of her throat. "I've missed you so much. I was afraid I'd never see you again."

"I didn't intend for you to," she replied, wondering how in the world she could have left Malibu without giving John a chance to explain.

She moved over on the bed to make room, and he lay down beside her, cradling her in his arms. She stroked his hair, kissed his shoulder.

He pulled away from her slightly so that they were both lying on their sides, their heads sharing the same pillow as they looked into each other's eyes.

"Knowing about Kevin's heart attack helps. It's so hard to deal with what happened to them. Wondering why something so awful happened, something out of which nothing good could come."

A sudden stillness captured John's heart.

"But Cassie," he said tenderly, gazing deep into her eyes. "Something good did come of it. Something very good."

She was puzzled, as he had known she would be. "No," she breathed. "Nothing good."

"Darling Cassie, if it weren't for your generosity, I would not be able to see your lovely face. Not your beautiful eyes—" and he kissed them one by one—"or your charming nose—" and he kissed it too "—or your sweet, soft, lips—" and he touched his lips gently to hers.

"What do you mean?" she asked, confused. His eyes, their pupils dark with love, gazed steadily into hers.

"Because you gave me the precious gift of sight, my love. I'm the one who received Kevin's corneas. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart."

"You?" Startled, she stared at John. It was not possible. It couldn't be true! She dimly recalled signing the paper, one of many documents they'd shoved at her after the accident. She'd thought at the time that donating his corneas was what Kevin would have wanted. Afterward she forgot all about it.

"I was in a freeway accident. A truck demolished my car and my corneas. The scars were so deep and so widespread that I could only see things in a blur, as if through frosted glass. I was afraid I'd never see again, and it meant that I couldn't fly, I couldn't drive. I thought my life was over until the doctors advised a cornea transplant. I waited months for a donor, Cassie."

Her thoughts spun, dizzying her with their force. She was speechless.

"When it was over, I was like a new person and filled with optimism for the first time since my accident. I'd plunged to the depths of despair, thinking that I would be blind for the rest of my life. I wanted to die. Afterward, I had to find Mrs. K. J. Muldoon and thank her, no matter what the cost. It became a matter of honor to thank you in person. But you wouldn't see me, and I knew that if it took moving heaven and earth to find you, that's what I would do."

She'd been wrong about him all along. John Bridges had fought his way out of the deep, dark caverns of the spirit just as she had. He knew where she'd been, understood as no one else could understand how hard it had been to pull herself out of the depths to which her soul had fallen.

Mutely she lifted a hesitant fingertip and trailed it along the scar bisecting John's eyebrow.

"The scar?"

"From my accident."

"When you found me, you didn't tell me who you were."

"How could I? You were in pieces, afraid of me, afraid of the world, afraid to fly. You were paralyzed by fear, Cassie. And because your gift—yours and Kevin's—had given me back my life, I wanted to give you back yours. Can I help it if I fell in love with you in the process?"

She didn't know tears were streaming down her face until John gently wiped them away with the edge of the sheet.

"Why are you crying? It's a story with a happy ending."

"Because I was the one who was blind," she managed to say.

"It's all over now," he comforted, stroking her damp hair. "We've both been through hell, and the worst part is that we've each been through it separately. We don't have to be alone anymore, Cassie. We can be together, sharing the good things and the bad. Can we put the past behind us and go on from here?"

She swallowed. "I love you," she said. "With all my heart. But how can we fit our lives together? I want to go back to Flat Top Mountain. You have a business to run. The practicalities make it impossible."

John enjoyed nothing more than a challenge. He was the kind who perceived a problem, defined the solution, and hung on until the solution was reached. He wasn't through fighting for her, not by a long shot.

"Sweet Cassandra," he said, loving her with all his heart. "We will find a way."

And then slowly and deliberately, he took her for his own, knowing that this time he would never let her go.