Halfway to Paradise Read online

  Ryan pulled his protective mask over his small face. His gloved fingers clenched and unclenched on the grips of his stick. As Mark had instructed him, he circled twice around the puck before he started his charge on goal.

  Mark watched from his spot at center ice. His shoulders shifted slightly with each of Ryan’s movements. When Ryan neared the goal, Mark clenched his hands together and leaned forward in anticipation. He knew the instant that Ryan released the puck from his stick that it would sail past the goalie’s left shoulder and lodge in the net.

  The small crowd went wild when the shot registered on the scoreboard. Mark threw his hands up in the air with a loud whoop. He could not have been more exultant had Ryan just won the Stanley Cup. Ryan pivoted to an abrupt stop on the ice. He met Mark’s gaze across the frozen expanse. His grin was broader than before, his eyes sparkled, a flush had settled in his cheeks. Mark gave him a victory salute.

  For an instant, Ryan ignored the clamor of his teammates, who were now pouring onto the ice. He lowered his head and began skating toward Mark, picking up speed as he crossed the ice. Mark waited, anticipating. When Ryan drew within a yard of Mark’s spot on the ice, he scrunched his little body into a tight ball and skated directly through Mark’s image.

  For the barest of seconds, Mark felt the slight touch of their souls, as fleeting and tender as a fluff of down on a summer breeze. He closed his eyes, savored, then willed himself to Maggie.

  Seconds later, he settled back in the comfortable first-class seat across from Maggie’s row on the plane. He pulled a Granny Smith apple from his pocket and took a bite. It took him several moments to realize that the attractive young woman with light brown hair and pixielike eyes in the seat next to him was staring at him. Disconcerted, he stared back. When her gaze didn’t flinch, he threw a quick glance over his shoulder. He was relieved to find she was actually focused on the view from the aircraft window.

  He returned his gaze to Maggie. She’d been crying, he realized. He decided to move closer so he could eavesdrop on her conversation with the tall, blond stranger—the stranger who was sitting far too close to Maggie for Mark’s peace of mind.

  He moved to lever himself out of his seat, then stopped, shocked, when his hand encountered the very real, very warm flesh of the young woman next to him, and his foot made sound contact with her shin.

  “Ow!” She rubbed her leg and glared at him in temperamental protest.

  Mark jerked back his hand, and stared at her. “Can you see me?” he asked.

  She smiled at him, a slight, enigmatic smile. “Ever since you dropped into that seat.” She extended her hand. “My name’s Annie. Annie Bishop. I guess you’re Mark.”

  Mark wiped the apple juice from his lips with the sleeve of his faded Marine Corps sweatshirt. “How do you know that?”

  Annie inclined her head toward Maggie. “That’s my husband, Scott. Your wife has been telling him about you for the last half hour.”

  Mark blinked. When he opened his eyes, she was still beside him. “Can you—I mean, are you—”

  “A ghost?”

  Mark nodded. She shrugged and tucked her feet beneath her long, gauzy skirt. “I guess, although, I stopped thinking about it a long time ago. No one can see me. No one can hear me. I can’t do anything. I just follow Scott around.”

  Mark looked across the row again and studied the view of Maggie bent close in conversation with Scott Bishop. “Maggie can’t see me either.” He stopped and glanced back at Annie. “But Ryan can.”

  “I suspected that,” Annie said.

  Mark frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

  “Your wife mentioned that your son claims he talks to you. She believes he’s having trouble accepting your death.” She made a small gesture with her hands. “I wondered if perhaps you were like me. Here, but not here.”

  “I didn’t know there were others,” Mark said. He pushed up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. “You’re the first one I’ve ever seen.”

  She nodded. “Me too.”

  Mark closed his eyes for a minute. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for you. Ryan is the only thing that makes this tolerable for me.”

  Her gaze turned wistful. “He sounds like a wonderful boy.”

  Mark’s eyes opened again, and he nodded. “Yeah. He’s seven and a half. Smart as a whip, too, and the absolute spitting image of Maggie.” He watched Maggie’s animated expression for a few seconds. “When Ryan was born, I couldn’t believe how much I loved that little guy. When Maggie handed him to me the first time in the hospital, it was like my whole inside exploded.”

  “Do you think Maggie’s right? Is he having trouble accepting that you’re gone?”

  Mark nodded. “I’ve tried to explain to him that I’m not real. He knows he can’t touch me, but he knows he can see me and hear me. It’s a lot for a kid to take in. What hurts the most is how sad he is. He was never like that,” Mark said. “One of the things that makes Ryan easy to love is the way he smiles at you.”

  Annie threaded her fingers through her hair. “Perhaps he needs you so much, he’s willed you to be visible to him.”

  Mark frowned and studied the slender young woman next to him. After nearly a year of his solitary existence, a year made tolerable only by the comforting, if odd, reality of his relationship with Ryan, he wasn’t sure what to make of this new development, or her probing questions. “Do you think,” he asked cautiously, barely daring to voice the question that nagged him almost daily, “that we’ll ever get out of here?”

  Annie looked over her shoulder and studied Scott. “I don’t know. I guess I almost started to believe this is what happens when you die. You’re just stuck here.”

  Mark’s gaze strayed back to Maggie’s profile. She was laughing, ever so slightly, at something Scott Bishop was telling her. Mark watched as she tucked a strand of pale blond hair behind her ear and smiled at Scott. He remembered those smiles. What the hell was she doing passing them around? “The worst part is being with Maggie, and not being with her all at the same time.”

  Annie’s eyelashes fluttered briefly. “Did you have a chance to say good-bye?”

  “No. I left for Saudi Arabia in August. I was supposed to be back the fifteenth of January. Maggie even promised to stall Christmas.” He smiled sadly. “We never even thought about the fact that I wouldn’t come back. It was supposed to be a routine training mission. Not coming back wasn’t an option. What about you and Scott?”

  “We said good-bye. I had to make Scott say good-bye. I was afraid he’d hold on forever if he didn’t.”

  Mark studied her. “How did you—go?”

  “Cancer.” She rocked back and forth slightly, swinging her legs over the side of the seat. “I was diagnosed a year before I died, though, so I had time to prepare Scott.”

  Mark glanced back at Maggie. “Nothing could have prepared Maggie.”

  “What about you?”

  The question took him by surprise. “What about me?”

  “Were you prepared?”

  “To die, you mean?”

  Annie nodded. Mark thought the question over. “No,” he said. “You never think about dying. You just fly each mission, go on each tour, do what you’re supposed to do. I guess it’s always there, in the back of your mind, but you never think about it.”

  Annie smoothed a hand over the hem of her pink sweater. “Missing Scott is the hardest part. I know how much he hurts sometimes. It makes me feel bad.”

  “I know. Maggie is having a rough time. She’s trying so hard.” He felt his chest constrict as he watched her pull a picture of Ryan out of her briefcase to show to Scott. “She really wants to move on. Sometimes I feel guilty for hanging around Ryan, like I’m keeping him from recovering or something.”

  “Why don’t you leave?” she asked, her voice quiet.

  “That would be like dying all over again.”

  Annie’s breath came out on a long sigh. She looked once at Scott, then back at Mark. S
he pulled at a string on her sweater, and unraveled part of the hem. “Do you think maybe this is what was supposed to happen all along?”

  “What?” he asked, not sure he liked the grave note in her voice. He stuffed his apple core into the seat pouch in front of him, then crossed his long, jeans-clad legs. He was glad Maggie was flying first-class this trip. He hated it when she flew coach and his knees were crammed up under his chin.

  “This,” she said. She indicated Scott and Maggie over her shoulder. “Do you think this is what we’re supposed to be doing?” At his confused look, she leaned over to place a slim hand on his forearm. The contact felt odd. He could tell by the way she was staring at her fingers against his skin that she was thinking it, too. “I haven’t touched anyone in so long.”

  “Neither have I. What do you mean we’re supposed to be doing this? Doing what?”

  She met his gaze. “I can’t help but wonder if we’re here,” she glanced over her shoulder, “with them, for a reason.”

  Mark leaned back in his seat. “Do you think we’re supposed to do something?”

  “I hope so,” she said. “I really, really hope so.”

  Two

  “I hope so,” Maggie said, in answer to Scott’s wistful question about the timeliness of their flight. She glanced at her watch. “I was supposed to fly out last night, but between the weather and the airline strike, so many flights were canceled, that this was the first one I could get. Ryan had a hockey game this morning, and I missed it.”

  Scott nodded. “I was supposed to be on the five A.M. flight. That’s how I ended up in first-class.”

  “I hope Ryan won’t be too upset. It was such an odd time for a game, but we had that big ice storm last week. That’s why his Saturday game got canceled. I guess they figured it would be all right since the kids were already off for the holiday.”

  “I’m sure he’ll understand. How old did you say he was? Seven?”

  Maggie felt drained. She could scarcely believe she’d spent the last hour and a half talking so openly with this stranger. Something in his voice, in the way he’d told her about his wife drew her to him more closely than she’d ever felt drawn to all time expensive therapists and well-meaning friends who had surrounded her after Mark’s death. For the first time since she’d boarded the plane in such a panic, she took a good look at the man who’d been so kind to her.

  He was tall, well over six feet she estimated judging by the way his long, denim-clad legs stretched in front of him to disappear under the seat. Casually attired in well-worn jeans and a soft flannel shirt, he looked completely at his ease with the charged emotional atmosphere their conversation had created. His sandy brown hair was slightly long, falling to just below his collar, but it had been his eyes that had drawn her, giving her the courage to trust him with the pain of losing Mark. His eyes were a clear hazel that deepened to a smoky green when he talked about his late wife.

  She realized that those eyes were still watching her intently, waiting for her to continue. “He’s seven,” she said, smiling, as a mental picture of Ryan popped into her head. “He’s really a super kid.”

  “It must be hard on you, raising him on your own.”

  “Sometimes. It’s like having a piece of Mark, though. Something he left behind. It’s been tough on Ryan, and I’ve been taking him to the counselor at our church. He still can’t seem to accept that Mark is gone. He insists that he can see him.” She looked at him, sensing a shift in his mood. “You and Annie didn’t have children, did you?”

  He shook his head. A lock of his hair brushed his forehead. She just barely resisted the urge to smooth it back into place. “It’s my biggest regret. There never seemed to be enough time, or enough money. We had agreed to wait.” He made a small sound in the back of his throat. “I had no idea we couldn’t afford the luxury.”

  “Would you like to tell me about Annie?” she asked.

  Scott exhaled a long breath. Maggie heard the regret, the loneliness in the soft whisper of air. “Annie.” Her name sounded more like a sigh. “Annie was the love of my life. I’d known her since we were kids, and even when I was too-tall and too-skinny and too-serious, Annie used to talk to me for hours about my plans to be an architect. I think I fell in love with her when I was twelve. I told her I wanted to build things, so she bought me an Erector set for Christmas that year.”

  Maggie smiled. “And are you an architect?”

  “Yes.” He sounded wistful. “That’s why I’m going to Massachusetts, as a matter of fact. I’m a partner with Hertson and Hubbard in Dallas, and we’re bidding on the Cape Hope project.”

  Maggie drew a quick breath. “You’re bidding on Cape Hope?”

  He nodded. “It’s my project all the way. If we get the bid, I think I’ll finally have enough recognition as a designer to start my own firm.”

  “Did I happen to mention why I was in Dallas?” she asked.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re an architect, and that you were sent to sabotage my plans.” He flashed her a brief smile. “It would ruin what I hope will become a perfectly decent friendship.”

  “Nothing so dramatic.” Maggie decided she liked the way Scott’s eyes reflected the sun from the tiny aircraft window. “I’m an interior decorator. I was at the Dallas design show picking up ideas for my own bid on the Cape Hope project.”

  Scott looked intrigued. His long fingers flexed on his knees. “Really?”

  She nodded, encouraged. “Yes. Ryan and I live in Cape Hope, and when the planning commission announced the project, I jumped at the chance to bid on it.”

  “Have you ever handled something this big before?”

  She shook her head. “I started my company, By Design, after Mark—with the money from his life insurance. So far, I’ve been doing smaller projects—homes, offices, that kind of thing. I’m counting on Cape Hope to make my business solvent. Mark left us very secure, and the money isn’t really the issue, but I needed to do this for me. I needed to feel like I was someone apart from his widow. My own person.”

  “I can understand that. It must have been hard being a military wife and an extension of his career, then having to adjust to being on your own.”

  Hard hadn’t been the word. Impossible. Insurmountable. Devastating. “Mark was stationed out of Cherry Point in North Carolina. After he died, I just couldn’t stay there. I needed to start over. That’s why Ryan and I moved to Cape Hope.”

  “How did you pick Massachusetts?”

  “I had a great aunt who lived in Cape Hope until she died about six years ago. She left me her house in her will, and it seemed the perfect place for me to take Ryan. I had studied interior design when I was in college. So I decided that would be the best way for me to start doing something on my own for a change.”

  “I imagine the hours work out well for you since you have Ryan to take care of.”

  “Oh, yes. I can do most of my site work and bidding while Ryan’s in school, and then do my designing at night out of my home. I wouldn’t want to be away from him, especially now when everything is different and things are so hard.”

  “But your business is struggling?”

  She groaned. “I didn’t know how competitive the held was. I guess I was just naive, but there are a couple of very large, very established firms in Cape Hope and in Boston. I think I’ve done well in carving out my own niche, but it’s still been tough. I’ve lost a couple of key bids on office suites in the last two months because the companies didn’t think I had enough experience.”

  Scott studied her. “Are you worried that might be an issue with the resort project?”

  She shook her head. “I think my plans are so different, that it’s going to be strictly a matter of taste. It’ll just depend on what the developers want. In both the previous cases, I was working within preconceived ideas. Those companies already knew what they wanted. With Cape Hope, at least for the interior project, the developers threw open the gates for us. We could draw up any type
of plans, any colors, any themes we wanted. I have a great vision for this project, and I’m really proud of the work I’ve done on it. Now it’s just a matter of waiting out the developers’ decision.”

  Scott rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “It was largely the same with the structural bids. We weren’t really given any guidelines. That’s what drew me to the project to begin with. I normally wouldn’t have bid on something so far away from Dallas, but I was attracted to the creative control. If I can win this bid, it will be a major boost for my career.”

  Maggie shifted in her seat, feeling a familiar rush of excitement as she talked about the Cape Hope project. “Would it be completely beyond the pale if I asked what your plans for the structure entailed? I mean, I don’t want to intrude on your artistic territory, but I would like to know, just out of curiosity.”

  “No, no it wouldn’t be a problem at all.” He gave her a wry smile. “Unless, of course, you’re a cleverly disguised mole for Cassiter and Claus.”

  Maggie recognized the name of the Boston architectural firm. She laughed. “I think if Lyle Cassiter was going to send someone after your plans, he could have done a lot better than a half-hysterical female.”

  Scott looked dubious. “Maybe. In any case, I was going to suggest that if you’d feel comfortable with it, I’d like to look at your designs. Maybe I could give you some input from a structural perspective.”

  “Would you do that?”

  He looked sheepish. “Especially if you were willing to look at the plans I’ve drawn and let me know what you think about the aesthetics.”

  Maggie felt the tingle of excitement spread over her scalp and warm her skin. She refused to believe it had anything to do with spending more time with Scott Bishop, enjoying the way he smiled easily and listened intently. Her memories of Mark were still too fresh, too painful, too vivid. No, it had to be the notion that Scott Bishop clearly took her seriously as a professional in her field, a respect she knew was hard-earned. “I’d be glad to,” she said.