The Cliff House Page 5

  “I remembered that this is where you took the girls when you left. I remember you talking about how much you loved it here, how your time in foster care in Cape Sanctuary was the happiest of your life, when you felt the most safe.”

  Had she said that? Probably. After their mother died when she was eight and her only sister, Jewel, ten years older, took off with the first of a long string of boyfriends, Stella spent five difficult years being bounced from foster home to foster home throughout Northern California. At thirteen, she finally landed in Cape Sanctuary with a wonderful, loving couple that showed her by example how a family should function. With mutual respect, with kindness, with compassion.

  Cape Sanctuary had become home. Naturally, this was also where she had been compelled to bring Daisy and Beatriz when she obtained custody of them after Jewel’s lifestyle caught up with her.

  “I guess, maybe I was looking for some kind of peace for me and for Rowan. She’s struggling a great deal over losing her mom. Holly’s death was...difficult. The idea of finding a sanctuary somewhere held a great deal of appeal. To be honest, I figured you probably weren’t here anymore. I just assumed you would have married and moved away and had the half-dozen children you always talked about wanting.”

  She hadn’t. Just the girls and this tiny life growing inside her, though she wanted to think she had been a mother figure to all the foster children who had found temporary refuge here at Three Oaks.

  “I’m still here,” she said, stating the obvious. “Thank you for warning me. Now I guess I’ll have no excuse to freak out if I see you in the street.”

  He was quiet, those handsome features she had loved so much looking tense and uncomfortable. “I want this move to work for my daughter, but not at the expense of you and your comfort here in town.”

  “It’s fine. It doesn’t bother me at all,” she lied. “You can move wherever you want, Ed. I hope that after all this time, we can be friends.”

  “I would like that,” he said softly. “I’ve learned that true friends in this life are as rare as they are precious.”

  He gave her a careful look. “Now that we’ve cleared the air and gotten the initial shock of seeing each other again out of the way, tell me about this pregnancy. How far along do you think you might be?”

  She knew exactly how far along she was, five weeks to the day since her last rendezvous with the doctor’s turkey baster. She wasn’t about to tell him that, though.

  “About a month,” she said.

  “Jo is an excellent doctor. You’re in good hands.”

  “Yes. She’s been my OB-GYN for years.”

  “Then you know her skills well.” He cleared his throat. “Thank you for being understanding. It’s really great to see you, Stella. And congratulations again.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I guess I’ll see you around.”

  Not if I see you first, she wanted to say, but that would probably sound juvenile coming from a forty-year-old schoolteacher who was about to become a mother.

  “Right.”

  To her astonished dismay, he leaned in and kissed her cheek, then turned around and walked through her door, leaving behind a little swirl of his distinctive scent that took her right back to those intense college days when she had been young and completely in love.

  Those heady months they had been together had seemed full of amazing possibilities. She had been close to graduating, in the middle of her last semester of coursework before doing her student teaching.

  It had been an important time for her scholastically but she had barely been able to keep her mind on her schoolwork that final semester because she’d been in love for the first and only time.

  Stella sank into her favorite chair, the one she had saved and saved to buy, with its whimsical forest scene created by her favorite artist, the anonymously infamous Marguerite.

  The chair usually centered her. It was the one she meditated in, read in, sat in to write in her diary. This time she couldn’t seem to find anything resembling peace as the memories crowded in.

  She had been so in love with the gorgeous medical student she’d met at the UCLA student health clinic when she had sprained her ankle playing beach volleyball with friends over the holiday break.

  Sparks had flared between them instantly and she had slipped him her phone number, something she had never done before or since. He called her the next day, ostensibly to check up on her ankle, and the two of them ended up talking for hours. Ed had dropped by the next night with a pizza and a bouquet of flowers and she had fallen hard. From that instant on, they spent every available moment together. They studied together, met up for meals on campus, spent all their free time hiking, riding bikes, or just taking a drive and talking.

  He had proposed after two months. It was entirely too early in their relationship and they were both too young. Plus, he had years of med school, residency and internship ahead of him.

  Both of them knew getting married had been a crazy idea but things seemed so right and real and perfect. Ed had been old-fashioned, hadn’t wanted to move in together without marrying her, and by that point neither of them could imagine being apart.

  She had known she wanted to build a life with him, so she had said yes. He was warm and loving, honorable and kind and amazing.

  She wasn’t sure what he saw in her, a former foster child with an alcoholic mother and a deadbeat father who had disappeared long ago, but she didn’t care. She had been lost in the wonder and magic of knowing he would be hers and they would build the family she had always wanted.

  And then she had found out purely by accident that her sister, Jewel, had died months earlier of a drug overdose, and Jewel’s daughters, her nieces, had been put in separate foster homes.

  And that was that. In that single moment her entire future had changed and she had known exactly what she had to do.

  The girls needed her.

  She had broken things off with Ed. What choice did she have? She could never ask him to help her raise two troubled girls, not when he needed all his energy and focus to become the brilliant doctor she saw inside him.

  He would have done it. He would have put all his dreams on hold to help her obtain custody of the girls and would probably have quit med school to help support them all.

  She couldn’t let him. So she had just...walked away. Eventually, she had told him she wasn’t in love with him, that she was too young to be married. That part was probably truth. She told him she had an offer to do her student teaching in Cape Sanctuary, at the other end of the state and a world away, and she was taking it.

  She had cried herself to sleep the first three months she was away from him and had tortured herself by keeping a picture of them on the beach in the drawer of her bedside table until she had finally forced herself to put it away.

  And now he was here.

  What kind of weird wind had carried him back into her life now? And what was she going to do?

  She wiped at the tears she hadn’t realized she still had inside her for Ed Clayton and a love that seemed as real and strong now as it had then.

  It didn’t matter. She touched her abdomen, to the tiny life growing there. She couldn’t let it matter. She had more important things to worry about now, like how in the world she was going to raise this child by herself.

  4

  DAISY

  She was late, and if there is one thing she hated more than last-minute tax filers, it was being late.

  Daisy pressed the buzzer at the wrought iron gates leading into her ex-brother-in-law’s estate along the cliffs overlooking the Pacific. Casa Del Mar was beautiful. It was by far the most luxurious and expensive house along this area of coastline. Built in the Spanish Colonial style, it was massive, around seven thousand square feet, with a recording studio, huge swimming pool, tennis courts and even a two-lane bowling alley. Its bi
ggest draw was the view, though, spectacular from just about every window.

  She lived in a house on the cliffs above the ocean, as well, just a half mile down the road, and had a stellar view herself, but the entirety of Pear Tree Cottage would probably fit inside Cruz’s master suite.

  He could afford it. As one of his team of financial advisers, she had a full picture of just how successful Cape Sanctuary’s hometown boy had become. The commission she earned handling his interests went a long way to helping her afford the property taxes for that house on the cliffs she loved.

  “Yes?” A disembodied voice spoke out of the tastefully hidden speaker. She didn’t recognize the greeter, which wasn’t a big surprise. Cruz’s staff rotated with dizzying frequency.

  “Daisy McClure. I have an appointment with Cruz.”

  The voice went silent for a moment then returned to the intercom. “Mr. Romero is busy right now. He’s about to have a massage.”

  She glanced at the clock on the dashboard of her BMW and frowned. She was five minutes late, granted, but she had a feeling the massage wasn’t some not-so-subtle dig at her punctuality. She was fairly certain that Cruz had completely forgotten about their appointment. He had a bad habit of doing exactly that.

  “Tell Mr. Romero he’s the one who called me to meet him at this time. He said it was important. This is the only time I’m free in several days. I’m here now. He can have his massage when we’re done. If you’d like, I can tell him that myself.”

  She spoke firmly, not worried about offending Cruz. She had known him since he was a kid living with his grandmother. She used to help him with his math homework after his grandmother had to go into assisted living and he came to live with Stella. He knew she wouldn’t take his crap—which might be why he entrusted a substantial share of his wealth to her keeping.

  “One moment.”

  An instant later the door glided open silently and she drove up the long, winding driveway lined with cypress and pine. Here and there, she caught glimpses of blue as the ocean peeped through.

  When she pulled up to the house, she saw several luxury SUVs there, indicating he had guests. From here she saw two people playing tennis and was positive that if she walked around the house, she would find more in the pool.

  Where was Cruz, however? That was the question du jour.

  She rang the doorbell and waited three or four moments, then finally pushed her way inside.

  As she might have expected, no one was there to meet her in the huge entryway, with its soaring ceilings and the colorful tile-work staircase and wrought iron banister focal point.

  “Hello?” she called out.

  Silence echoed through the entryway in response. She frowned, annoyed all over again. Give a guy a few Rolling Stone covers and include him as one of People magazine’s sexiest men of the year, and he thought the world revolved around him.

  She had a couple of options. She could wander around the vast house playing Find the Pop Star. Or she could handle things a different way.

  She pulled out her phone and texted him.

  I’ll be in the sitting room off the great hall. I can wait for ten minutes, then I’ll go and we can reschedule. My time is valuable, too.

  He texted her back immediately.

  Sorry, babe. Forgot you were coming. Be there in a sec.

  She sighed. Cruz might be selfish and narcissistic, and her sister might have divorced him for completely understandable reasons, but he was still family and she loved him.

  She headed for her favorite spot in the house, a small, comfortable room near the sprawling kitchen, with a beautiful view of the Pacific. The windows opened here and she could usually find a lovely breeze, sweet with the sea and the scent of the climbing roses that grew outside.

  It also had three original Marguerites, an intricately painted table and two matching chairs.

  She knew to the penny how much Cruz had paid for them, a staggering amount that still made her blink.

  Cruz liked to think he had discovered the mysterious furniture artist. In a way, she supposed he had. It was a spread of this house in Architectural Digest where he gushed about her work that had put Marguerite on the wish list of every designer in California.

  If she had hoped she might have a few moments to herself to enjoy the functional art while she waited for Cruz, she was sadly disappointed.

  Someone was already there.

  A man who was asleep, his feet on the coffee table and a drink on the extremely expensive Marguerite side table—without a coaster.

  She knew this man, she suddenly realized. She had last seen him climbing into a luxury SUV outside the supermarket the night of Stella’s birthday party.

  He wasn’t staring at her now. He was out, probably sleeping off a night of partying with Cruz into the wee hours.

  She was aware of the sting of disappointment at discovering the man she had thought about several times since their brief encounter was only another one of her ex-brother-in-law’s sycophants and freeloaders.

  A gorgeous one, yes, but that didn’t make up for being a slob.

  She grabbed a walnut-and-leather coaster off the little tray—they were right there, for heaven’s sake—and bent over to slide it under his drink.

  “Well. That’s a lovely thing to wake up to.”

  She jerked her gaze down at the deep voice and that slight, hard-to-place accent and found his stunning green eyes open and fixed somewhere south of her neck. Only now did she realize the position she was in, bending almost over him so that her unfortunately abundant girls were just at his eye level.

  Making matters worse, the top button had come loose on her tidy dress shirt, she realized, revealing plenty of cleavage as well as a hint of the decadent lace from the minimizer bras she favored.

  “Oh.” She straightened quickly, blushing as she worked to button her shirt.

  He sat up, wincing a little. “Sorry. That was the drugs talking. I’m usually not such a pig, I promise.”

  She couldn’t help her inelegant snort of disbelief. A slob, a pig and a junkie. Typical of Cruz’s guests.

  It was completely unfair that he could still manage to look rumpled and sexy, hair messed and the perfect degree of dark stubble.

  She stepped away from him and glowered.

  “I have an appointment in this room momentarily with Cruz. We’re going to talk about big important, boring things, like taxes and annuities and investment properties. I suggest you find somewhere else for your nap. I’m sure there are all kinds of bikini-clad women out by the pool for you to ogle.”

  He blinked a little but she refused to feel guilty for the attack.

  “Wow. Thanks for looking out for me and my ogling.” He glanced at the coaster. “And my water glass, apparently.”

  “As Mr. Romero’s financial adviser, I am compelled to protect his assets. Have you any idea how much an original Marguerite goes for these days?”

  “Entirely too much, if you ask me, for hand-painted folk art.”

  She did her best not to hiss and tried to rein in her temper. “I didn’t. Ask you, I mean.”

  Yes, she sounded bitchy, but she was fairly protective of the artist in question.

  The insufferable man gave her a closer look. “You must be a fan.”

  Daisy had no idea how to answer that. “I admire the woman for building an artistic empire while keeping her anonymity.”

  “If Marguerite is a woman. From what I understand, nobody knows. Could be a ninety-year-old hillbilly with a pot gut and gout who woke up one morning in the nursing home and decided to pick up a paintbrush and go to town on some old furniture.”

  She gripped the strap of her briefcase to keep from walloping him on the side of the head with it. “Isn’t it funny how everyone has a theory, but nobody seems to have any proof?”

  “He makes sure
of that, doesn’t he? And that only adds to the mystique, which I’m sure is quite deliberate. I wonder if everyone would still show the same kind of frenzied interest if they found out Marguerite is some middle-aged housewife with too much time on her hands.”

  “Make up your mind. Is Marguerite a bored housewife or a ninety-year-old man trying to pass the time in a nursing home?”

  “Does it matter? The taste arbiters don’t care. They only want what everybody else wants.”

  Who was this man? He seemed older than Cruz’s usual assemblage of unfortunates, the name she had given the acolytes or aspiring rockers or groupies who were drawn to her ex-brother-in-law’s fame.

  There was an intelligence in his eyes that seemed to glimmer through the bleariness of sleep and the haze of whatever drugs he was on.

  Who was he, and what was he doing here at Casa Del Mar?

  “Do you see something wrong with that?”

  “No. I always find it fascinating when something takes hold of the public consciousness. You have to wonder why, right? What makes a musician like Cruz hit big? Talent is part of it, certainly. He is unquestionably talented. A brilliant songwriter with a decent voice and a strong stage presence. But so are hundreds, maybe thousands, of others trying to make it big. There’s something else, some hidden cultural zeitgeist.”

  “Cultural zeitgeist.”

  “Do you know that humans are among only a very few species in the animal kingdom who excel at passing on certain behaviors through imitation, not DNA? Some songbirds do and great apes to a small extent, but that’s about it in the animal kingdom.”

  “What do songbirds and great apes have to do with Cruz Romero? Or Marguerite, for that matter?”

  “Look at the things we call fads. We want what someone else says we should want. Do you know that nobody cared about Vermeer until about two hundred years after his death, when somebody decided he was a genius and the rest of the world jumped on board?”

  “I guess it’s lucky Marguerite and Cruz didn’t have to wait that long, then, isn’t it?” she answered tartly.