Page 45 of Save the Dance

“Look.” Jason’s eyes met hers. “You’re smart. You’re capable. I refuse to believe you can’t make things work at Weddings Today. You’ll just have to dig in, find what you’re looking for. You’ll see. You have time to give your editor what she wants. Buckle down and do the very best you can.” Jason nodded like he understood.

How could he, when she hadn’t told him the rest of it? Doing her best would mean destroying his livelihood. Their love couldn’t survive that. He deserved to know everything. No matter what it cost. “There’s more. I—”

His phone chimed.

Relief swelled in her chest. Jason was right. She wouldn’t have to tell him the rest after all. She’d find a way to resolve things on her own so he never had to know how close she’d come to destroying the town he loved. When Jason didn’t move a muscle but continued to look at her expectantly, she asked, “Don’t you have to get that?”

He grimaced. “I should’ve shut off the ringer. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message.”

Less than thirty seconds later, a different, more insistent alarm bell rose over the sound of the wind and the surf.

“Guess it was important after all.” He withdrew the phone from his back pocket and glanced at the screen. “Duty calls.” He sighed heavily. “Walk back with me?”

“You go on ahead. You probably have things that need your attention.” She lifted her travel mug. “I’ll stay here and finish my coffee.” She had problems of her own to resolve. Chief among them, how she was going to save both her job and Jason’s love when having one would destroy the other.

Tara uncapped a bottle of water and took a drink. Stretching, she worked the kinks out of shoulder muscles that had stiffened during the hours while she’d sat, hunched over the desk in her room, paging through Mary Heart’s diaries. With lunch only an hour away, she hoped to finish reading by the time she went downstairs. She capped the bottle and set it aside, ready to get back to work.

Fifteen minutes later, a phrase leaped off the page. Tara rubbed her eyes. The words written in Mary’s elegant script remained the same. She started over at the beginning of the entry from October 17th, 1897. Unable to believe what she was seeing, she traced the lines with her finger. It took three tries before she convinced herself she’d read it right the first time.

The Mary S dropped anchor in Heart’s Cove this evening. Praise be to God for delivering my husband’s ship and crew home once more.

Her pulse kicked up a notch. With a reminder that now wasn’t the time to jump to conclusions, Tara checked the date she’d written after reading Captain Thaddeus’s account of the storm he’d encountered on his way from New York to Heart’s Landing. Same year. Same month. Same week. Her heart skipped a beat.

Her movements slow and methodical, she pulled up the hurricane tracking information she’d downloaded onto her laptop. None of the massive, swirling storms that had originated off the coast of Africa had been given names until the 1950s. Before then, they’d simply been referred to by number, and in 1897, the fifth storm of the season had been the only one to rage along the entire East Coast. On October 9th, 188 crewmen had died when their ship had been swamped by high winds and sank off the coast of Cuba. From there, the hurricane had churned northward in the Atlantic. Ten days after it had struck Cuba, the storm had roared ashore at Cape Hatteras, then bounced back out to sea. It made landfall only once more, striking Rhode Island’s Block Island with gale-force winds on the twentieth. After that, it had dissipated entirely.

She pushed away from the desk, her thoughts in as much turmoil as winds in a hurricane. She’d traced the paths of every major storm to make landfall in the U.S. during the years Captain Thaddeus had plied the seas. Storm Number Five was the only one that fit all the criteria. The legend of Captain Thaddeus had to have been built around it.

But there was a problem—a huge, glaring problem. According to Mary’s diary, the Mary Shelby had reached port on October 17th, two full days before Number Five had made landfall in North Carolina. With the hurricane still that far south, Thaddeus couldn’t have sailed through it on his final leg of an ocean voyage that had taken him from London to New York, and then home to Heart’s Landing. He’d been too far north to encounter even one of the storm’s feeder bands.

One by one, like pieces of a puzzle, the facts clicked into place. For over a hundred years, people had assumed that the storm Captain Thaddeus had encountered had been a hurricane. They’d described how he’d steered the ship straight up the front of towering waves, only to plunge into troughs so deep they hid the ship’s mast from sight. Old seafarers had talked about how the captain had worried about the loss of cargo and lives if the ship swamped. How he’d braved winds that would’ve knocked lesser men to their knees in order to stand at the helm of the Mary Shelby.

But he hadn’t done any of that. He couldn’t have. Number Five had been nearly seven hundred miles farther south when the crew of the Mary Shelby had run into rough weather. Thaddeus and his crew hadn’t encountered anything more than your garden-variety storm. And not even a bad one, at that.

Her mouth went dry. This was the proof she needed to save her job, the evidence Regina had asked her to find.

What now?

She twisted a strand of hair. In college, her professors had harped on the need for journalistic integrity. They’d taught that a good reporter revealed the truth, no matter the consequences. Earlier today, when she’d told Jason how much she was afraid of failing, he’d encouraged her to pursue her dreams. He’d told her to dig deeper, leave no stone unturned, which was exactly what she’d done.

All her hard work had paid off. Success was finally within reach.

She wouldn’t kid herself. Her success carried a hefty price tag. Revealing what she’d discovered would hurt the people in Heart’s Landing, people she’d come to think of as friends. To say nothing of what it’d do to Jason. He’d be devastated when he learned that the legend surrounding his famous relative was a lie. He’d blame her for exposing the truth.

But she had to report what she’d found. She owed it to Regina and Weddings Today—to say nothing of how much she owed it to herself—to tell the real story. Unveiling what she’d discovered was her chance to prove, once and for all, that she’d become the journalist she’d always dreamed of being.

Telling herself she had no choice didn’t stop her fingers from shaking, though. It didn’t keep her stomach from turning mutinous as she assembled the data she’d gathered. Once she’d proofed everything—twice—she saved the file to her laptop. She hefted her computer. As much as she didn’t want to risk running into Jason or Evelyn, she’d have to go downstairs to send in her report. A quick check of her cell phone told her it was nearly noon. She was in luck. The hubbub of arriving brides and departing wedding parties made the dining room a busy place over the lunch hour. With all the comings and goings, no one would give a second thought to a lone woman sitting in a corner staring at her computer screen.

Though she grew sicker to her stomach with every step, Tara picked her way down the stairs. She made it as far as the dining room without spotting Jason and drew in a relieved breath. A move that backfired when she inhaled the rich smells of quiche, fresh fruit, and coffee. She stashed her laptop on her favorite corner table. Hoping to calm her stomach, she loaded a small plate with items from the buffet and grabbed a cup of coffee. Back at her table, she nibbled on a plain bagel while she waited for her computer to boot up. Snatches of the conversation at the table next door drifted her way while she brought up her email program.

“I, uh … Saundra, there’s something I forgot to tell you.”

Tara stole a quick glance at the thin young man who’d just rearranged his silverware for the third time.

“There’s no other Mrs. Kevin Dobson, is there?” Sitting opposite her nervous groom, Saundra casually straightened the diamond solitaire on her ring finger.

“No. Not ever.” His expression earnest, Saundra’s fiancé grasped her hand. “You’re the only one for me.”

“You’re the only one for me, too, Kevin.” Saundra leaned in for a quick kiss. “Nothing else matters.”

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