Through Eyes of Love Read online

  Through Eyes of Love

  The Keeping Secrets Series

  Book Two

  by

  Pamela Browning

  Award-winning Author

  THROUGH EYES OF LOVE

  Reviews & Accolades

  "Pamela Browning creates...memorable characters and richly detailed settings."

  ~Romantic Times

  Published by ePublishing Works!

  www.epublishingworks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61417-436-3

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  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 1985, 2013, 2015 by Pamela Browning. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Cover and eBook design by eBook Prep www.ebookprep.com

  Dear Reader,

  Sometimes we take things for granted. Our sight, for instance. Most of us know that we have the option of donating our corneas so that someone else can see. But how many of us make sure that will happen?

  I'm an organ donor. It says so on my driver's license. I hope that my eyes, which have seen so much beauty in this world, will eventually help someone else to do the same.

  All too often, we don't know the personal stories behind medical situations. The same is true of accidents that forever affect people's lives. That's one of the reasons that I wrote Through Eyes of Love. I wanted to show how Cassie's generosity impacted John's life, and how something good could come out of something bad.

  By helping each other, they helped themselves. And they fell in love in the process!

  I hope you enjoy their story.

  With love and best wishes,

  Pamela Browning

  www.pamelabrowning.com

  With special thanks to my friend, singer and songwriter Sandy New, who made the right choice all those years ago.

  And in memory of Buddy, who was the reason she made it.

  Prologue

  Somewhere West of Los Angeles

  February 2009

  Cassie stared in horror at her husband, who was unconscious and slumped over the yoke of their small plane.

  "Kevin? Kev?" She shook his arm, but he didn't respond. The plane's single engine continued to drone as though nothing had happened. Outside was darkness overlaid with stars—no earth, no horizon, nothing.

  Calm. It was important to remain calm, but Cassie couldn't believe this was happening. The three of them had been cruising comfortably at sixty-five hundred feet, and her husband had suddenly gasped and fallen forward.

  "What's wrong with Daddy?" asked her son Rory, peering wide-eyed and frightened through the space between the two front seats.

  "I don't know," Cassie said, panic rising with the bile in the back of her throat.

  She swiveled in her seat and clenched her fingers around the yoke in front of her. Kevin had shown her how to fly the plane a few times, and once she'd practiced landing on their runway at home with him beside her at the plane's dual controls. He'd always been safety-conscious and knew that sometimes unforeseen events could incapacitate a pilot. But she'd never thought anything like this would happen. Not to Kevin. He was in excellent health and only thirty-three.

  "Mommy, Mommy," cried Rory from the back seat. "I'm scared."

  Her son was barely five years old, a sweet blond cherub of a boy, and Cassie's instinct was to gather him in her arms and comfort him. She was scared, too. But she couldn't worry about Rory now. She had to fly the plane. And land it.

  Cassie summoned every ounce of concentration she possessed. First, the radio. She set the control to the emergency frequency. Then she grabbed the microphone.

  And she was thinking, oh, Kevin, what is wrong? His face, what she could see of it with his head sagging against his chest, appeared gray in the glow from the control panel. Was he breathing? She couldn't tell, couldn't spare the time to take care of him any more than she could look after their son, not with their lives in peril as they hurtled through the sky in their pilotless plane.

  "Mayday, mayday," she shouted into the mike. Too late she realized that she hadn't pressed the transmission button. She fumbled and repeated the distress call. The speaker crackled, but there was no response. She slid her eyes across the complicated control panel. Which gauge was the altimeter? Which was the directional gyro? She was so petrified that she couldn't think straight.

  No one answered on the radio. Cassie saw no other aircraft in the wide black sky. Where were they, anyway? If she managed to reach somebody, she'd have to give their location. They'd been traveling west toward home, but they hadn't reached Palm Springs yet. Cassie would have noticed the lights below as they passed the city on their way to Wildflower, their estate nearby; she always noticed the lights.

  She was so damned scared. She swiped at the teardrops rolling down her cheeks, and her arm inadvertently struck the yoke so that the plane dived sharply. By instinct, she yanked the yoke upward. The plane stabilized and she fell back into her seat and sobbed in relief, drawing great gulps of air into her lungs. Hearing her distress, her son flung himself across the width of the back seat and wailed.

  It was Rory's fright that lent her strength. She didn't care about herself anymore, only for her husband and son. She had to save them.

  Cassie jammed the microphone to her lips. "Somebody please help me," she sobbed. "Please, somebody. I'm all alone and I don't know how to fly this plane."

  The mike fell to her lap as she buried her face in her hands. She fought to gain her balance on the thin sharp edge of panic. They'd all die, all three of them, and it would be her fault.

  The radio speaker crackled, and then, like a miracle, she heard a garbled transmission.

  "Where... you?" rasped a male voice.

  She grappled at the mike and depressed the button. "I don't know. My husband is unconscious."

  "Don't..." and the rest of the sentence was lost.

  After an eternity, the voice transmitted clearly. "I'll talk you down," he said.

  Cassie hardened herself to ignore her child's screams of terror and sent up a silent prayer of desperation.

  "Tell me what to do," she said.

  And they sailed through the sky, the three of them, halfway home.

  Chapter 1

  Near The Town of Scot's Cove, North Carolina

  June 2011

  Cassie measured her breathing. In, out. In, out. Above her, the leaves of a giant black oak rippled in the wind. The muscles of her face slid into repose, and she rested her hands with palms upturned on her knees. Cassie found the lotus position comfortable for meditation; she concentrated on the quiet place inside her and didn't detect the stranger's approach.

  She focused her mind on the rhythm of her breathing, rising upward on each exhale
d breath, allowing her mind to float free of her body, free as a leaf, free as air wafting skyward from Flat Top Mountain.

  The stranger moved quietly, wondering how to present himself. He had traveled a long way to find her.

  She was not at all what he'd expected, this woman whose stillness contrasted so sharply with the riotous magenta of the rhododendron blooms behind her. Of course, John had known little about her when he started out. But this earthy creature, nut-brown and clothed in a shapeless garment of hyacinth blue, didn't look like the woman he'd sought at the secluded desert estate near Palm Springs, nor did she appear to be the type who would feel at home in the glitzy apartment complex in Los Angeles.

  He studied her intently. Her hair was buoyant and long, springing from its roots with a life of its own. The color of it was sun-streaked brunette, and it looked like a crackling extension of her nut-brown skin. Fascinating hair, he decided. But in that moment when she first came into view, her face was what drew his attention

  If he were to draw a line down the center of it, dividing it neatly in two, each side would be different. The same eyes, nose, mouth, except that the left eye was ever so slightly more elongated than the right one. The left nostril flared more than the right. The left side of her mouth tilted upward and the right side did not. Each side was beautiful but different, like a sketch blurred on one side by a careless finger.

  Cassie, her meditation interrupted, felt her scalp tingle with the sensation of someone watching. Startled, she opened her eyes. The man stood quietly at the edge of the clearing. His expression was so concentrated, so intense, that she gasped.

  She scrambled to her feet, frightened. "Who are you?" she said, and her voice had a breathless little-girl quality, as though syllables were filtered through a whisper. To him, her voice sounded familiar. But of course it wasn't. He'd never met her before.

  "I'm your neighbor," John said easily, letting her get a feel for him. "I've rented the cabin." He gestured over his shoulder toward the path through the woods.

  "No... no one lives there," she stammered. "Not for years."

  "I talked Ned Church into leasing it for the season. I needed a place, and..." He shrugged.

  "Why didn't you rent a house near Linville? That's where summer people usually go." There was no doubt in Cassie's mind that this man was a tourist. With that fine-spun dark hair and smooth sun-bronzed skin, he looked like the lost denizen of a land where aquamarine swimming pools were standard equipment in every back yard. She could almost smell it on him—a scent of Someplace Else where the sun shone year 'round and the air was flavored with chlorine and the smoke of barbecue grills.

  "Linville's not for me."

  By this time Cassie couldn't contain her curiosity, and she was no longer afraid. She'd already pegged him as a decent person. She could always tell. Something in the eyes. Cassie divined goodness in this man even before she took note of his high cheekbones, the cleft in his chin, his broad shoulders straight as the cross of a T.

  She relaxed. "Well, what are you doing here, then? Flat Top Mountain is definitely off the beaten path."

  "I'm a nature photographer," he told her. It was a line that he'd carefully rehearsed. Actually, he'd never held anything more complicated than a one-size-fits-all digital camera in his hands until two weeks ago, when he'd bought the Nikon 35mm and a mystifying set of lenses.

  "You're going to photograph the mountains?"

  "Mostly the plants native to the area," he said. Would she buy it?

  But apparently she didn't sense anything odd.

  She smiled and extended her hand. "Welcome," she said. "Neighbor."

  Her hand in his was not soft and small, nor was it rough. There was a hardness to it, a competence. She withdrew it quickly from his.

  At that point all hell broke loose.

  A ramshackle minivan tick-ticked up the winding unpaved road, belching clouds of exhaust before lurching to a stop in front of her house. Out piled people in assorted shapes and sizes followed by a dog or two.

  "Grampa's got the colic again," called the smallest child. "He won't let us take him to the clinic in town." The dogs commenced snapping and yapping and chasing each other through the underbrush.

  "Excuse me," Cassie said apologetically before she headed for the house. She limped slightly. This drew John's attention to her legs. Looking at them was anything but an unpleasant task, although the left one appeared to be shorter than the right. Her body within her shapeless garment was supple and lithe and exquisitely graceful. Somehow her odd choice of clothing suited her.

  John reluctantly followed. By the time he reached her porch, she had stepped briefly inside the house and reappeared in the doorway. She carried a small brown medicine bottle.

  "Tell your grandfather to drink this," she said into the milling group. "It's the same thing I sent last time."

  "Sure do thank you," said the man to whom she handed the remedy. He grinned a friendly gap-toothed smile.

  One of the dogs, a big grayish-white coon hound with spots the exact shade of liver mush, leaped out of the shrubbery and all but bowled John over. With the dog's paws planted in the middle of his chest, John did his best to fend him off, but before the animal galloped away, his claws left two angry red welts on John's right arm.

  Without bothering to apologize for their pet's misbehavior, two rambunctious boys rounded up the dogs and shoved them into a back seat. Then the people piled in after them and, amid a cloud of fumes, the minivan jolted down the mountain.

  This left Cassie and John staring at each other.

  "I—" he said.

  "You—" she said at the same time, looking down at the scratches on his arm.

  They stopped and laughed self-consciously. He held her gaze for a moment before she glanced away.

  "You'd better let me take a look at those," she said, her tone all business.

  "You're a nurse? A doctor?"

  "Not exactly. You should wash the scratches so they won't get infected. Come in," she said. "I'll take care of it."

  He followed her inside, curious about her house. It was no more than a cottage, built partly of stone and partly of wood, and there were many windows. Those afforded a breathtaking view of Magnus Mountain to the right and Pride's Peak on the left, plus a host of lesser hills in between.

  "Let me get my things." She disappeared into the kitchen, leaving him holding his hurting arm.

  "I'm Cassie Muldoon," she said over her shoulder, busying herself in the long rectangular kitchen adjoining the front room. She stood at an oak counter, pouring clear liquid out of a bottle onto a cloth.

  "I'm John Howard," he replied, glad that she couldn't see his eyes when he said it. Somehow he knew she'd detect this bit of falseness in him, not that he had a choice. He had no doubt that if he told her his complete name, she'd send him packing immediately.

  He waited quietly in the combination living and dining area, which was furnished with table hewn from a square slab of wood and covered with a cloth laid diagonally to reveal curly-maple corners. Rag rugs allowed the polished oak floor to peek out here and there, and the walls were painted a pleasant cream color. Bunches of flowers and leaves hung from dark ceiling beams, their fragrances mingling to lend the room an aromatic scent. A magnificent fieldstone fireplace took up one whole wall. A handmade quilt, very old, decorated another. The quilt's time-mellowed colors glowed in the sunlight that streamed through the windows.

  Cassie limped over to the table. She motioned for him to sit down; it was a graceful gesture. Her breasts bobbed round as plump apples beneath her shapeless dress, but John pulled his eyes away from that part of her anatomy. He wasn't interested in her in that way.

  "I'm going to wash your scratches with tincture of marigold in water," she said, moving closer.

  "What?" he said, recoiling slightly.

  "I use it all the time for bleeding wounds. It's an old herbal remedy of my grandmother's."

  Nonplussed, John watched her as she dabbed at
his scratches. Her touch was soft but sure. He wondered how she had gained this skill and why she'd chosen to live so far from her previous home.

  Cassie concentrated on what she was doing. Nevertheless, it didn't escape her notice that John Howard was an undeniably handsome man. She hoped that he would not mistake her attempt at neighborliness for something else, something sexual. She was celibate, a decision at which she hadn't arrived at lightly, and she intended to stay that way.

  She shot him a surreptitious look as she poured more of the tincture on the cloth. His tall, dark good looks were stunning, and those laser-beam eyes, an intense blue, were intelligent. He had a bold chin, and she couldn't help admiring the determined set of it.

  John had noticed the profusion of wildflowers decorating the edges of the path to Cassie's house and the more tame varieties massed in beds in her garden in the back. "Do you make this stuff from your own marigolds?" he asked.

  "Yes. I also make other remedies from the herbs I grow. For some reason Flat Top Mountain has always been especially fertile, and the rich soil ensures a good harvest." She capped the bottle she held and tossed the cloth into a basket.

  "What do you do with your herbs? Sell them to dealers?"

  "I have a roadside stand on the highway and supply local restaurants. Otherwise they're for my own use in my herbal remedies. You know the family that was just here? I gave them a garlic potion for their grandfather's stomach spasms."

  His eyebrows flew up skeptically. "Does it work?"

  "Of course," She smiled. "Herbal medicine has been around since the cavemen."

  He looked at the red welts on his arm. The bleeding had stopped, and they didn't look as angry.

  "Aren't you worried that you'll hurt someone? Keep people from going to a doctor if they're really sick?"

  "My remedies are meant to work in conjunction with medical care, not against it. You have to realize that I'm using recipes that my grandmother employed for fifty years."