Carolina Mist Read online

  CAROLINA MIST

  Mariah Stewart

  REUNITED AFTER YEARS APART, CAN TWO KINDRED SPIRITS REKINDLE THE PASSION OF THEIR FIRST LOVE?

  Since the age of nineteen, Abigail McKenna has been on her own. Working hard to fulfill her dream of professional success and financial security, Abby has put her personal life on hold, content to bury herself in her career. But when she's laid off from her fast-track position in a Philadelphia financial consulting firm, she is stunned to find herself with a dwindling savings account and no promising job prospects. When a letter arrives holding the solution to all her financial problems, Abby is relieved but saddened. Her dear Aunt Leila has passed away, naming Abby sole beneficiary of her estate.

  But Abby is in for a few surprises when she arrives in Primrose, North Carolina, to claim her inheritance. Her aunt's home is now a ramshackle old house in desperate need of repair, not the elegant Victorian mansion of Abby's childhood memories, and it's inhabited by her aunt's best friend, Belle, who, appears to be staying on as a permanent guest. Everything about Primrose has changed, but Abby still has her memories… lazy summer days and warm summer nights spent with Alex Kane, a past—and a love—she can't forget…

  Prologue

  February 1987

  Even the brutal cold of a distinctly belligerent mid-February had not kept them away. The antique dealers and the curiosity seekers eagerly sought to rummage through the bits and pieces of the lives of the locally celebrated deceased who had until so recently lived amidst the splendor of the palatial town house.

  They came with their checkbooks and their credit cards and their cash, to carry away the Oriental rugs—the Kirman with the medallioned portraits of one hundred and one kings of Persia, and the Qum silk carpet, red and blue intertwined on a field of ivory—and the fine furnishings. It was rumored that the pair of Biedermeier mahogany tables that had stood on either side of the bed in the master chamber were expected to possibly set a new record, and the Hepplewhite secretary from the front hall would bring its value and half as much again before the gavel would pound the podium to mark the end of the sale.

  And then there were the collections: the art, impressionists and modernists alike; the imported pottery, rare Oriental pieces like the pottery model of a house with a hinged door from the Han dynasty and an early Sancai warrior from the Tang dynasty.

  For those having less exotic tastes and more modest bank accounts, there would be the household appliances and the record collections (classical and jazz only) and the books (not surprisingly, some first editions).

  Then, of course, there would be silver and imported china and porcelain—a Sevres dinner service, circa 1823, a pair of Meissen candelabra, and, naturally, the Ming and Imari vases, the Satsuma and Cantonese bowls, the Royal Worcester and the Derby and the Minton—all carefully lined up shoulder to shoulder on display tables around which selected employees of the auctioneer stood guard to ensure that the pieces were not handled.

  Only those seeking a glimpse of the jewelry that had once adorned the lady of the house were to be disappointed. Because of their reported value, the rings and necklaces and bracelets with which Harold McKenna had so lavishly gifted his beloved Charlotte had already been sent to Sotheby’s, where they were expected to fetch a fortune. Not enough of a fortune, of course, to satisfy all the debts left behind when the small plane owned by the extravagant couple had crashed in the Canadian Rockies some months earlier, but enough, it was said, to satisfy the IRS, which had acted swiftly to ensure that the contents of the brown-stone would remain undisturbed behind padlocked doors until such time as their worth could be assessed and the government’s pound of flesh exacted.

  The slender young woman slid into the back of the room unnoticed by the others, who, having viewed the contents of the house the day before, were again checking their catalogs for the items upon which they would bid once the auction began. The young woman leaned back against the wall and fixed her eyes straight ahead. The rustle of anticipation that stirred through the crowd as the auctioneer mounted the podium swept through her on a wave of nausea.

  She shook her head to decline the seat offered by one of the auctioneer’s helpers. She had wanted to be in a position from which she could quickly and easily leave once her business was concluded. Jenkins, the lawyer, had promised that through an arrangement with the auction house, those items she sought would be among the first lots offered. She would not have to witness the frenzy as the fragments of her life were picked apart and swallowed up by the scavengers, who gathered like hungry jackals, biding their time until their desire to consume could be sated.

  The auctioneer, a tall, balding man in a green cardigan sweater and dark-rimmed glasses, cleared his throat and checked the microphone before he reminded the hopeful seated before him of the rules. Bid by holding up your numbered card. Many pieces have reserves, that is, a minimum acceptable bid. To save time, certain items will be sold in lots. The crowd shifted restlessly. They knew all this. They wanted to get on with it. The woman leaning against the wail thought of the spectators of ancient Rome, anxious to have the games begin, and was sickened by the sport.

  Lot one: photographic equipment. Sold to a young man in a brown suede jacket.

  Lot two: table linens. Sold to a woman with a sleek hairstyle in the middle of the fourth row.

  Lot three: photographs.

  The young woman raised her hand, holding up her bright yellow numbered card for the auctioneer to see clearly. Her bid was acknowledged, and she relaxed. Then, to her shock, another bid was made. A man in a brown overcoat two rows in front of her had raised his card to enter his bid. The auctioneer looked to her, giving her an opportunity to respond. She nodded her head, yes, to which the other bidder again nodded. Why, she thought numbly, would anyone else want these few boxes of old photographs?

  Her hands began to sweat as the bid continued to mount. Soon it became apparent that the price had gone beyond her reach. She stood in shock as the man in the overcoat accepted the boxes from the hands of the auction assistant, then turned to flash a look of good-natured triumph in her direction. The horror reflected in her eyes drew him to the back of the room. At his approach, she fled wordlessly through the open doorway into the foyer, now painfully stripped of its once celebrated works of art.

  “Miss… hold up there.” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to one side of the front door. “Look, I don’t know why these old photos mean so much to you, but obviously you want them more than I do. I only wanted the album… all that fancy silver work on the cover must be worth a fortune. Never saw anything like it, have you?”

  Yes, she could have told him. There is one other.

  “Was it the photos you were after?” His voice had softened. He had clearly been touched by the pain so apparent in her eyes.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Look, for ten dollars, you can have all of the pictures.”

  She nodded, took a single bill from her wallet, and handed it over with shaking fingers. She watched patiently as he carefully removed the old photographs from the pages of the album, then accepted the boxes reverently as if they held her firstborn child.

  “Thank you,” she said simply, then turned to walk through the door, the hot tears burning her skin as they slid down her cheeks.

  Never again, she silently vowed, tightly clutching the boxes that held her baby pictures, her parents’ wedding pictures, to her chest. I will never go through this again…

  1

  1995

  At nine thirty-five on the morning of her twenty-seventh birthday, on the very day she’d planned to present a killer report on the Adkins account—thereby ensuring yet another quick hop up the corporate ladder—Abigail McKenna received a most unwelcome surp
rise.

  “…and, of course, we’ll make outplacement available to you.” Nancy Joachim’s thin lips appeared to move almost continually as she precisely recited her prosaic dissertation on all that White-Edwards would do to make Abby’s entry into the world of the unemployed a smooth one.

  As the director of human resources for a company that had, over the past six months, taken a financial beating, Nancy was well versed in sympathetic pauses and encouraging smiles. She’d had a lot of practice, particularly in the past three months, as one department after another had been forced to cut its staff. Nancy knew the drill by heart. The termination of Abby McKenna had been as swift as a knee jerk, and just about as impassive.

  Abby had barely moved or changed expression since she’d taken her seat fifteen minutes earlier. In fact, the second she realized what was happening, her mind had clamped shut as firmly as a stubborn clam, making any response improbable.

  There was no way this could be happening to her. It simply wasn’t possible.

  “I strongly suggest you take advantage of the outplacement, Abby.” Dylan Forester leaned across the narrow space that separated their chairs and touched Abby lightly on the arm. As vice president in charge of her department, Dylan had shared in breaking the bad news. “They’ll give you a nice office to go to every day while you polish your resume and a secretary to type it for you.”

  Abby turned an ashen, uncomprehending face in his direction but did not speak, her heart pounding disconcertingly—loud enough, she was certain, to be heard in the lobby, some twelve floors below.

  Nancy nudged some papers across the desktop, and Dylan handed her a pen. Abby uncharacteristically signed her name without question. She could not think, could not read, could not react. All her inner circuits had shut down with the shock of finding herself exactly where she swore she’d never be.

  Numb feet carried her equally numb body to the elevator, where routine forced her fingers to the button for the eleventh floor. She’d gotten all the way back to her office and was about to close the door when she realized Dylan had followed her.

  “Listen, Abby, I know this comes as a big shock. I didn’t even know myself until last night.” Dylan leaned toward her, a tall, thin body topped by a long, narrow face. “Believe me when I tell you, this was the very last thing I wanted…”

  Of course, Dylan would have fought to keep her. It had been Abby who had produced the stellar reports that had helped Dylan’s own star to rise and shine so rapidly. Of course, he would be reluctant to let her go. She had made the department—and Dylan—look oh so good for oh so long.

  “Who else?” She managed to loosen her vocal cords.

  “Wilson, Trina, Nick…”

  “Barsky?” she asked.

  “Well, no.” He cleared his throat. “The decision was made to keep him on.”

  If you’re going to keep at least one live body, it might as well be Barsky, she thought. He was the only person Abby’d ever met who was flattered—flattered!—when his ideas were stolen and passed off as someone else’s, most often Dylan’s.

  “Listen, Dylan, I need some time to myself.” She gestured impatiently for him to leave.

  “Oh, sure. Hey, I understand.” He backed toward the door as she advanced. “And listen, I’d be more than happy to provide you with glowing references. You can count on me. And Abby…”

  She closed the door in his face and leaned back on it, taking in a few deep, highly controlled breaths before walking slowly to her desk. She dropped into her chair, permitting her shoulders to slump, not knowing what to do first. Pushing the whirlpool of panic to the back of her mind, she opened the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out a box of business cards. Wooden fingers pried the lid off and pulled out one of the pale gray cards.

  L. Abigail McKenna, Assistant Vice President.

  Not anymore.

  Without ceremony, she emptied the box into the wastebasket and watched as the avalanche of cards tumbled in slow motion toward the bottom. Biting her lip to force back bitter tears, she swung her chair around and looked out the window.

  Abby had declined a larger office following her last promotion simply because she had loved this view. The Parkway spread out before her, a wide boulevard patterned, it was said, after the Champs Elysees. So many of Philadelphia’s landmarks lay just beyond the window—the Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural History, the Art Museum. A few blocks down, a fountain danced in Logan Circle. Frequently, on summer days such as this, she had bought lunch from one of the vendors and walked the few blocks to sit on a bench near the fountain, finding the delicate trickle of the water soothing after an intense morning. More often than not, during the school year, the Parkway would be lined with yellow buses from every adjacent state which would fill the air with exhaust fumes as each waited its turn to deposit its passengers in front of whichever landmark was first on their particular agenda. Each successive crop of class-trippers would spill onto the sidewalk, where they would crowd noisily into untidy lines while the teachers and chaperons attempted to count the ever-moving heads of their charges. The summer visitors to the city arrived with fewer fumes and less fanfare than the schoolchildren, and on many a day such as this one, Abby had enjoyed a few peaceful moments to herself in the shadow of some of the city’s most popular tourist attractions.

  She stood at the window, her face pressed against the glass. Steam rose from the sidewalks as the July sun turned morning dew into haze. One hand rested on the glass, as if to reach beyond and touch the trees lining the Parkway. The other hand had been drawn into a tightly clenched fist, her fingernails digging unconsciously into her palm.

  Damn! How could this happen to me? I have worked so hard, planned every move so carefully… even chose White-Edwards from a wide field of contenders because of their stability. How could this have happened? A perplexed Abby slapped the open palm of her hand onto the flat window glass.

  It’s my own fault. She began to pace the length of the room. I should have seen it coming a year ago, as soon as they started talking merger… should have started looking then. It’s always easier to find a job when you have one.

  She pulled a tissue from the box on her credenza and wiped her face, careful not to disturb her makeup. Appearance was everything, she reminded herself.

  Let it never be said that Abigail McKenna couldn’t take it like a man.

  It took a surprisingly short time to empty her desk of her personal belongings. One by one, the few bits of herself she had brought with her five years earlier dropped into her briefcase—a small crystal clock, a brass picture frame holding a photograph of her parents, a Cross pen-and-pencil set, her personal appointment book, a small phone book of navy blue leather with her initials in gold. Abby was all business. There had been little evidence in the room to give a hint of her personality or her preferences. The desk drawers held no cards from birthdays past, no personal correspondence, no magazines or books. The prints on the wall had been selected by the decorator hired when the company moved in, and Abby had not replaced them, as others had done.

  Placing her leather briefcase on the desktop, she snapped the brass closures with trembling fingers. She glanced around the room, as if unconvinced that she’d packed all her belongings. It occurred to her that the office looked almost exactly the same as it had on the day she moved in. The desktop was cleared of all except the leather blotter, a Rolodex, the same In and Out bins she had inherited from her predecessor. Only the thickly bound sheaf of paper on the left side of the desk—the proposal on the Adkins account she’d completed the evening before—bore proof that she had been there. She studied it for a moment, that fat ream she’d worked herself into a near frenzy to perfect, and was tempted to stuff it into her briefcase, enjoying the mental image of Dylan’s scrambling to come up with something between now and two this afternoon, when he would need to present it to the board. Ever the professional, Abby dropped the report into her Out basket, squared her shoulders, and inched her chin up a not
ch or two before opening the door.

  Not allowing herself a backward glance, she strode down the hall to the elevator, forcing a perfunctory smile when she passed a familiar face. Grateful to find the elevator empty, she hit the button for the lobby. A woman got on at nine, Gail Something-or-other, Abby recalled, from the accounting department.

  “Gonna be hot again today.” Gail hit the button for four.

  “It would appear so,” Abby replied stiffly.

  “I sure do hate these Philadelphia summers.” Gail shook her head as the doors slid open and she stepped out.

  Three men—all vaguely familiar and all wearing lightweight summer suits—got on at three and nodded in unison to Abby, who smiled wanly and dropped her eyes to the toes of her tan leather shoes, hoping to avoid even a cursory conversation.

  She walked across the lobby and through the front doors, then out onto the sidewalk, where she paused for a moment before turning to cross the street, leaving White-Edwards—and her brilliant future—behind.

  2

  Two weeks, max, she assured herself as she fumbled with the key to her second-floor apartment. Probably less. With my resume, I should be able to walk into a great job by the end of the week.

  She dropped her purse and briefcase on the nearest chair and removed her dark green unlined silk jacket, walking into the neat bedroom to place it immediately on its hanger. She went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of iced raspberry herbal tea with hands that suddenly felt weak. After taking a few long sips, she leaned back against the counter, her left foot tapping out the passing seconds in agitation before she began unconsciously to pace back and forth in a narrow path between the stove and the sink.

  Eventually, she paced herself into the living room and slumped on the sofa, holding a throw pillow against her middle to force back the panic that had filled her and turned her legs to water. She heard herself sobbing as the fear and anger and confusion spilled out and splashed about her in heated waves. Knowing she could not stop it, now that it had begun, she gave in and cried mindlessly until her throat burned raw and her eyes were all but swollen closed. When the torrent had stopped, she sat motionless in a state of suspension, mentally protesting the improbable twist of fate that had taken all that she had prized most in her life.