Summer on the Cape Read Online Free PDF Page B

warfare inside him, her sweet-scented, young loveliness combined with the cruel pain that broke his heart, over and over again. Eight years, and nothing, nothing had been like that burst of sunlight on the airfield today, and the lift of the light wind. Zach felt his soul would crack.
    * * *
    At last, as the sun dropped beyond the bay, Zach straightened up. He turned on his headlights and pulled out onto the highway. They’d be waiting for him down at the dock and he had work to do. The matter of Allie Randall and his questions about what she was really doing here would have to be put on hold for a while. He drove until he came to the little town and then he turned onto the road that led to the harbor.

Chapter Three
    W ith her hand still on the door handle, Allie stood in the entryway for several moments, unable, or unwilling, to move. Then, as though clearing her head, she said, “Well, this isn’t getting me anywhere.” She turned and prepared to take stock of this place that would be her home for the summer. She slipped off her jacket and dropped it carelessly onto a ladder-back chair that stood along one wall of the entryway, next to an antique pine blanket chest.
    She took a deep breath and said aloud, “Let’s see what sort of place Adam has here.”
    In the living room, broad sliding doors opened onto a deck that reached toward the ocean, and the reflected light allowed a late-afternoon glow to fill the house. She walked through the rooms and discovered a kind of home that was completely new to her city-bred experience. Light-filled and spacious, it seemed to be made of the very air and scent of ocean and beach and the long, feathery grasses that grew along the tops of the tall dunes.
    And it was no surprise to her that the rooms were beautifully furnished.
    Adam never had anything but the best.
    Each piece of furniture was a fine antique. The floors were perfectly pegged oak, and fabrics and colors had been thoughtfully selected. As she walked from room to room, Allie ran a loving hand over the fine wood surfaces, sensing the care that had been given them. This was the kind of home she’d dreamed of when she was little.
    What surprised her most was the difference between this “cottage” and the elegant and elaborate settings in which she was accustomed to seeing Adam. This place was delightfully simple and thoroughly comfortable. There was nothing fragile about the antique pieces. Blanket chests and rocking chairs and high-topped desks had about them the solid look of having been well used by many generations, and of being ready for many more generations to come. There were old-fashioned hooked rugs on the floors, and upstairs, in the bedroom, there was a big bed with an intricately hand-carved old headboard and footboard of beautiful aged cherry wood. On the bed, there was a fine old quilt, made of hundreds of scraps of fabric, stitched lovingly together by some long-ago Yankee grandmother, during the cold winter nights, by candlelight, here in this very house—
    Hey, take it easy. The old imagination is beginning to work overtime. Adam probably picked up the quilt at an antique auction in Manhattan.
    At the end of the upstairs hallway, beyond the master bedroom, a door opened onto a stairway that went down into a separate wing on the north side of the house. Allie suspected that this room had once been an attached barn. It was two stories high and had been fitted out as an artist’s studio. A big skylight had been placed into the original roof, and because the room faced north, it was ideal for a painter. It took Allie’s breath away. Adam had said only, “Don’t worry. You’ll have some space where you can paint up there.” She hadn’t realized that when Adam said “some space,” what he meant was that she would have an artist’s dream studio.
    Many years of disciplined work took precedence over any fatigue she felt, and she brought all her painting materials and supplies into the studio and