Free Laura Abbot by Belleporte Summer Page B

lady out.”
    He wanted to. He really did. But it wasn’t that simple.
     

    P AT STOOD at the kitchen window and watched Noel finish loading the rocking horses and children’s cane-seated rocking chairs into the truck. He paused then and, as he always did in moments of repose, gazed around, taking in the mountain view before him. Even after all these years, her heart filled with love. Noel was a fine man, and they’d lived a good life. One very different from what might have been. Of course, she’d never know if that other life would have been better, but she doubted it.
    Now she waited, knowing Noel would come into the house and force on her the question she’d been expecting from him ever since the phone call from Laurel last week, asking if they could deliver Noel’s pieces and her weavings to Belleporte. Laurel wanted them to see The Gift Horse.
    Noel was leaving in the morning and would stop overnight in Ohio to pick up an order of jewelry made by a supplier of Laurel’s.
    She heard his boots on the porch, then the door opened. He entered the house, followed by Dylan and Fonda.
    “All set?” she asked.
    He hung up his jacket, then approached her. Slowly he removed her glasses and set them on the counter. “Not quite.”
    His eyes sought hers, but she couldn’t bear the recrimination she read there and twisted away. She knew what he was going to say. She didn’t want to hear it.
    He held her loosely in his arms. “Please come with me tomorrow. Laurel wants you to come. I want you to come.”
    A moan built inside her, but instead she rasped the words, “I can’t. You know that.”
    “Oh, Pat, darlin’, I know no such thing. Let it go.”
    She bit her lower lip. “Please, Noel. Don’t ask me. It’s too much. It’s not time.” Then more softly she added, “It may never be time.”
    He rubbed his hands up and down her arms, then, with a resigned sigh, stepped away. “I’ll tell Laurel you send your love.”
    “Yes, do that,” Pat said, feeling ice penetrate every bone in her body. The same ice that had formed on that awful afternoon so many years ago.
     

    W RAPPED IN A CASHMERE THROW , Katherine Sullivan sat on the sunporch in her favorite easy chair, surveying the lake, choppy on this blustery March Saturday. In her hands, warming her fingers, she cupped a mug of hot mulled cider. It felt so good to be here. Home. At last.
    On the horizon a steamer made its way across the lake, like a tiny target in a midway shooting gallery. The endless motion of the water, the sunlight glinting on the frothy whitecaps, the wind whipping the flag flying outside were balm to her soul. Maybe this moment represented the silver lining of Frank’s death. Before, she couldn’t have considered living full-time at Summer Haven.
    She and her family owed a great deal to Frank. Who knows? Except for him, there might have been no Summer Haven to come home to. Her father had been a gregarious man with a deep laugh and an endless supply of stories, and Katherine had adored him. But in retrospect, she recognized that besides being a born raconteur, he was also the ultimate wheeler-dealer. Making it big, losing it even bigger, then somehow miraculously landing on his feet. Until that last time.
    Katherine pulled the throw tighter around her shoulders. She’d never forget the day he gathered the family to tell them he was putting Summer Haven on the market. Up to that point, no one, not even her mother, had known the extent of his losses. Despite his attempt to maintain a confident front, Katherine had recognized and been frightened by the fear in his eyes. If the cottage didn’t sell immediately, he told them, they would have one last season in Belleporte.
    So began that summer. Katherine was twenty. For most, it was a time of beach parties, tennis tournaments and treks to Lake City dance halls. But for Katherine, it was an anxious succession of days and nights passing too swiftly, racing toward the end of Summer