Holding the Dream Page 0,26

she trying to fool? Somehow it had to do with everything. How could it not? She'd lost what she had taught herself to value most next to family. Success and reputation.

Now she was exactly what she'd always been afraid she was. A failure.

How could she face them, any of them, with the fact that she'd been fired, was under suspicion of embezzling? That she had, as she always advised her clients not to, put all of her eggs in one basket, only to see it smashed.

But she would have to face them. She had to tell her family before someone else did. Oh, and someone would. It wouldn't take long. She didn't have the luxury of digging a hole and hiding in it. Everything she was and did was attached to the Templetons.

What would her aunt and uncle think? They would have to see the parallel. If they doubted her... She could stand anything, anything at all except their doubt and disappointment.

She reached in her pocket, chewed viciously on a Tums, and wished for a bottle of aspirin - or some of the handy tranqs Margo had once used. To think she'd once been so disdainful of those little crutches. To think she had once considered Seraphina a fool and a coward for choosing to leap rather than stay and face her loss.

She looked out to sea, then rose and walked closer to the edge. The rocks below were mean. That was what she'd always liked best about them, those jagged, unforgiving spears standing up defiantly to the constant, violent crash of water.

She had to be like the rocks now, she thought. She had to stand and face whatever happened next.

Her father hadn't been strong. He hadn't stood, he hadn't faced it. And now, in some twisted way, she was paying the price.

Byron studied her from the side of the road. He'd seen her car whiz past as he was leaving Josh's house. He wasn't sure what impulse had pushed him to follow her, still wasn't sure what was making him stay.

There was something about the way she looked, standing there at the edge of the cliff, so alone. It made him nervous, and a little annoyed. That vulnerability again, he supposed, a quiet neediness that called to his protective side.

He wouldn't have pegged her as the type to walk the cliffs or stare out to sea.

He nearly got back into his car and drove off. But he shrugged and decided that since he was here, he'd might as well enjoy the view.

"Hell of a spot," he said as he walked up to her. It gave him perverse pleasure to see her jolt.

"I was enjoying it," she muttered and kept her back to him.

"Plenty of view for two to enjoy. I saw your car, and..." When he got a look at her, he saw that her eyes were damp. He'd always been compelled to dry a woman's tears. "Bad day?" he murmured and offered her a handkerchief.

"It's just windy."

"Not that windy."

"I wish you'd go away."

"Ordinarily I try to comply with women's requests. Since I'm not going to in your case, why don't you sit down, tell me about it?'' He took her arm, thinking the tension in it was edgy enough to cut glass. "Think of me as a priest," he suggested, dragging her with him. "I wanted to be one once."

"To use some clever phrasing, bullshit."

"No, really." He pulled her down on a rock with him. "I was eleven. Then puberty hit, and the rest is history."

She tried and failed to tug free and rise. "Did it ever occur to you that I don't want to talk to you? That I want to be alone?"

To soothe, because her voice was catching helplessly, he stroked a hand over her hair. "It crossed my mind, but I rejected it. People who feel sorry for themselves always want to talk about it. That, next to sex, was the main reason I decided against the seminary. And dancing. Priests don't get lots of opportunity to dance with pretty women - which, I suppose, is the same thing as sex. Well, enough about me."

He put a determined hand under her chin and lifted it. She was pale, those long, spiky lashes were wet and those deep, doe's eyes damp. But...

"Your eyes aren't red enough for you to have had a good cry yet."

"I'm not a sniveler."

"Listen, kid, my sister highly recommends a good cry, and she'd deck you for calling her a sniveler." Gently,