The Touch of Love

  The Touch of Love

  Vanessa Grant

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Muse Creations Inc.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. These characters are not even distantly inspired by any individual or individuals known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  Published by Muse Creations Inc

  Box 4514, Nanaimo BC

  Canada V9R6E8

  http://www.musecreations.com

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to Jill and Nigel of Magic Tern, good companions on the voyage north

  Table Of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Biography

  Books by Vanessa Grant

  Chapter One

  By the time he got to Queen Charlotte City, Scott thoroughly regretted his decision to take the ferry. He could have flown. He realized by now that he should have taken the jet from Vancouver to the Queen Charlotte Islands.

  Instead, he had taken one ferry to Vancouver Island and another to Queen Charlotte, thinking that it would be better for the baby. That was before he discovered that Robin Scott Alexander was subject to violent attacks of seasickness. Incredible that he and this baby could share blood, yet take to the sea so differently.

  Sitting in the aft passenger lounge of the ferry, Scott crooned at the baby. Robin Scott howled back at him. Scott made rocking motions with his arms in hopes of enticing the unhappy infant into silence, perhaps even into sleep. During all his own years at sea, Scott had secretly believed that seasickness was psychological, a physical symptom of fear. Yet here he was, saddled with a two-month-old bundle of screaming, whimpering agonies, and a twenty-six hour ferry trip. Psychological? He had always tried to be patient with his seasick crewmembers, but he vowed in future to be more sympathetic.

  Easy, kiddo, he crooned, shifting the baby up to his shoulder.

  Behind him, an irritable voice muttered, Shut that bloody kid up, for God's sake! I'm getting sick of this!

  So was he! Scott stood up with Robin in his arms and grimaced wryly at the amused stare of the matronly woman sitting opposite. Earlier, he had nursed the futile hope that she might offer to hold the baby, might silence Robin with some magical motherly touch. Unfortunately, his wishful thinking had been pure fantasy. The matron had smiled sympathetically, but showed no sign of wanting to take over Scott's problem.

  Walking, pacing between the rows of passenger seats on the Queen of the North, Scott finally soothed the infant into stillness.

  Silence, then the faint moaning, then the stiffening of the little body. He recognized the warning signs, knew he had only seconds to avert disaster. He dodged around two slow-moving, elderly men and dashed through the cafeteria, then around three businessmen and a young mother with a toddler. He ran desperately for the men's room and-this time-got there before young Robin threw up all over yet another clean shirt!

  A day and a night on the ferry and Scott had worked his way through three shirts and two pairs of trousers. And this was supposed to be simpler than taking the jet?

  But it had seemed such a good idea. Robin Scott Alexander had been an angel back in Vancouver. Too young to realize he had lost his mother, to worry that his future was very uncertain, the baby had slept through the funeral, and had gurgled happily in his crib while Scott sorted through Donna's possessions, crating up the personal things that the baby might want some day, sending them on by courier to his own home on Cortes Island. Sorting, throwing out, saving, he had learned more about Donna than he had known during her short life.

  While he sorted through the souvenirs of Donna's life, he had wrestled with the problem of this baby, Donna's child by a man she had never been willing to name. He did not want to leave the child to the whims of the social welfare system, orphaned and alone, and yet-

  Then he had found the letters, just as Robin opened his throat and let out a mighty wail. A new diaper-thank the lord for the public health nurse who had come and shown Scott about diapers and formulas! Then a bottle, and with Robin sucking contentedly on his bottle, Scott had read the letters that gave him the answer to little Robin's future. One phone call and he was sure baby Robin's father would be flying to Vancouver to take charge of his son.

  The Queen Charlotte Islands, those ancient bits of land in the cold Pacific waters of northern British Columbia. Scott had seen the hills and mountains from the decks of various ships over the years. Always passing by, he had never set foot on their shores. His memories held scraps of information gathered from magazine articles and film documentaries, an impression of ancient forests, of quiet, good-hearted people, a world apart from the rat race. A good omen, he had thought. A home for young Robin amid the sounds of sea birds and the love of people close to nature.

  Robin. Donna had named the baby after its father.

  But there was no telephone number to match the name on Donna's letters. There could be any number of reasons for that. The man might have his number under a business listing. How the devil had Donna, a pure city girl, met a man from those remote islands? Scott had frowned down at the baby, staring into dark eyes that seemed black in most lights. A stranger, this baby, with dark hair and dark eyes, with none of the fair coloring of the Alexanders. Although young Robin Scott Alexander had never been exposed to the hot sun, his skin was darker than Scott's own weathered fair skin, certainly unlike Donna's smooth, pale flesh. Perhaps the father was Haida Indian, or part Haida. It was certainly a possibility, if he lived on the Charlottes.

  Reading the letters Donna left behind, he had realized guiltily that he had been too busy with his own life, that Donna had needed him and he had not been there for her. And now little Robin needed someone. Scott frowned, realizing he was planning to hand the infant over to a name on a piece of paper.

  What other choice had he? Sylvia, Donna's foster mother, was too frail to take on a child, and there was no one else. Caroline would be shocked if he suggested she look after this child, and rightly so. He shied away from the idea of asking Caroline to marry him and give Robin Scott a home and a family. Marriage had never had a place in Scott's plans for the future, and it was unlikely he'd have any aptitude for fatherhood.

  No. It was impossible for him to give the baby a home. A man could not look after a child by remote control from a ship in the Beaufort Sea, even if his year's work was usually completed in the eighteen weeks or so when those northern waters were navigable.

  So the answer lay in Queen Charlotte City, a mere hour by commercial jet from Vancouver. But Scott had rejected the idea of the jet, not wanting to disembark at Sandspit airport with an infant baby, dependent on local transportation to get him across the harbor from Sandspit to Queen Charlotte, to find an address that was only a number on a piece of paper. He disliked the idea of being ejected from a taxi, complete with baby and diaper bag, to confront a stranger, yet knew he could not dump little Robin alone in a hotel room while he checked things out.

  He might be able to rent a car at the airport, but he had been in enough small, northern communities to know that he could easily end up stranded at the ai
rport with a telephone number for a car rental outfit, and no one answering at the other end. Far better to arrive with his own transport. After all, the Queen of the North made regular trips to the Queen Charlotte Islands. A big, modern, roll-on, roll-off ferry with staterooms and dining rooms. Better, travelling with a baby on the ferry, driving off in his own truck. Especially as Robin was such a placid young thing. The baby would sleep the voyage away.

  In fact, Robin did sleep, all the way from Port Hardy across the Queen Charlotte Sound, to Bella Bella and across Milbanke Sound. Throughout the journey, Scott stayed at the baby's side, chained by his unaccustomed role as nursemaid.

  Normally, Scott would have looked up acquaintances among the crew. He had caught a glimpse of the captain, had recognized him, and would have liked to make his way up to the bridge and share reminisces of their days as seamen on the coastguard's Alexander MacKenzie. Instead, he had stayed with Robin, appreciating for the first time how much a child could trap a young mother.

  Then, in the middle of the night in Princess Royal Channel, the southeasterly winds had hit. Nothing dangerous, nothing he would have thought about twice, but enough to upset passengers with frail stomachs.

  And Donna's baby.

  When Scott went into the men's room to rinse out his first shirt, all he could see was the soles of shoes through the spaces below the cubicle doors. Sick passengers. Sick baby.

  Robin alternated between screaming and throwing up all through the night, falling into a fitful sleep as the ship docked in Prince Rupert. Then, at noon, when they set sail again, Robin whimpered. As they crossed Chatham Sound, windy but not terribly rough, Robin writhed in Scott's arms. They cleared the islands into Hecate Strait, and the baby gave up any pretence of calm.

  Queen of the North, big and sturdy though she was, shuddered as she crashed down on the steep waves of the Hecate Strait. A southeaster, with all the anger of the Pacific flooding into the big, shallow strait. The waves were steep and violent, miserable going in the most seaworthy of vessels.

  After changing out of his third shirt, even Scott couldn't face the thought of supper in the cafeteria, and in fact the kitchen had closed. Scott got himself a hot chocolate from the dispenser, then took one of Robin's bottles down to have it warmed. Robin rejected the bottle in any case, and Scott didn't finish his chocolate.

  Finally, they cleared the markers at Lawn Point and turned to make the run into Queen Charlotte harbor. Sheltered from the south wind by the mass of Moresby Island, the Queen settled into calm water. Robin fell asleep just as the announcement came on the loudspeakers. All passengers to the car decks.

  > The matronly woman from the passenger lounge stopped Scott as he started down the stairs to deck C. Next time, she advised in husky, expert tones, Give the poor thing a bit of Gravol before you take him onto a boat. He shouldn't have to be so sick. A bit of Gravol and he'd sleep the whole trip away.

  Thanks, he muttered, knowing there would be no next time. His custody of this child was purely temporary.

  She bent to look at the baby, stroking his cheek with a gentle finger. Robin opened dark eyes and stared at her without expression and the woman looked from the baby to the man holding him. Takes after his mother, doesn't he? she decided. He certainly doesn't look much like you.

  Chapter Two

  Melody woke Monday morning at eight-thirty, later than usual, thickheaded and yearning to curl back up under the covers after her late night. She resisted the lazy impulse. Seven of the recordings were complete, ready for Robin and the band, but there were five more, ideas roughed out but not ready yet, and the recording studio booked in Los Angeles for a date only six weeks away.

  She got up and pulled on her housecoat, more for warmth than modesty. She usually slept in an oversized T-shirt. With the trees surrounding her house, the chances of anyone looking in on her were minimal. She was accustomed to wandering around the house in bare feet and the T-shirt most mornings until she had consumed at least three cups of coffee.

  Not today, though. That wind was cold, and somehow the electric heating system was not keeping up with the cool wind. She went around turning up the thermostats in all the rooms, cursing Amanda and Charlie for their nineteen-year-old decision to pull out the oil furnace and install electric heat. It might have made sense back then, when electricity was so much cheaper, but now ...

  Of course, Amanda and Charlie had hardly ever been here to realize how much better the oil furnace would have been. There would have been something so much more warm about heated air blasting out of vents in the floor, but from their long-term hotel room in the Caribbean, Amanda and Charlie could hardly be expected to think about the virtues of cuddly warmth. It was just lucky that they had left the fireplaces intact!

  She put on the coffee to drip, then took the recording she had made last night into the living room and pushed it into the stereo.

  The living room was massive, a long room running from the front of the house to the back. It was divided into two parts, more by decor than by shape. The front, with windows looking out over the front lawn, through the trees to the water, was the public part, decorated with light, old-style wallpaper and big oak beams. Two big over-stuffed sofas, the television set, bookshelves and coffee tables. The massive picture window.

  The back was private, the walls dark walnut, the drapes a deep, rust-colored brocade. Everything warm and dark and private, even the two big easy chairs that faced away from the public part, looking out at shadowed moss under old, twisted trees, at the creek that murmured as it moved endlessly, dividing the Connacher property from the Edgley property.

  The stereo system was at the back, positioned by Charlie for optimum listening from those two chairs. Typical Connacher priorities: music came first. Melody had installed the new ham radio transceiver there, too, mainly because it was close to the antenna tower she and Robin had put up years ago, when they had jointly gained their amateur radio certificates.

  Her eyes fell on the radio transceiver and she smiled, thinking that Charlie would have a fit when he found out how she had contaminated his favorite room with the dits and dahs of Morse code, the howling and squealing of distorted radio signals. Certainly that had never been Charlie's intention when he and Amanda bought this hideaway. But, possession being nine points of the law, Melody was the one in control here, no matter how the deed of title was worded. And Charlie might rant and rave, but in the end he would let her have her way. Years ago, after one disastrous attempt to put her on stage, Charlie had learned it was easier to give in to his daughter than to fight her.

  Before turning the stereo on, she went to get a cup of freshly brewed coffee, then curled her feet up under herself in the big chair nearest the window and reached one hand out to push the button that would start the music.

  She listened with her dark eyes closed, her hands with their short, unpolished nails curled around the warmth of her coffee mug, her unbrushed, short brunette hair tumbled wildly around her head. The bass guitar took over the room, then the percussion instruments, then Melody's own voice, which was only a substitute to put the words in place over the music. It would be Robin singing the words in the studio, and in addition to this version, she would give the band the written music and words, and a clean DAT tape with only instrumentation, no voice. In fact, if Robin turned up in Queen Charlotte in time, she would get him to do the voice-over.

  It was good, with the dreamy, poetic rhythm that she was best at. Her mind substituted Robin's deep, powerful voice for her own and she felt the excitement growing. This one was going to be a winner. It might be the title song for the album.

  The music faded to silence with a final, emotional chord from the bass guitar. All synthetic, the guitar and the percussion instruments, but Jeff had advised her well. The equipment upstairs might lie in one of the best recording studios in North America, and no one listening could tell that this was not real musicians playing tunes to Melody's command.

  She shut off the stereo and went for
another cup of coffee, decided against breakfast because she was out of yogurt and had no milk to pour over her granola. She would buy milk today, after her session upstairs and before she went to the radio station. She wrote herself a note-'milk'-and tacked it up on her bulletin board.

  She washed up her supper dishes from last night as she drank the coffee, her mind already upstairs in the sound room, then she poured another cup of coffee and carried it with her upstairs to her bedroom.

  The doorbell rang just as she pulled her sweater out of its drawer. She hesitated, then started unzipping her robe. She would dress first. Nine o'clock on a Monday morning. Surely no one would be in such a massive hurry that they couldn't wait while she put on her clothes.

  She shrugged out of the robe just as the buzzer went again. Damn! This was the islands and surely nothing was that urgent! It was probably the mailman with the contracts from her agent. Peter always sent them registered, which she could never see the point of because it was no faster and they could easily be re-copied and sent again if they should go astray. Registered meant that she had to come to the door and sign for the envelope, inevitably meaning that she had to interrupt a session in the music room, throwing everything out of sync and putting her back a half-hour by the time she got back to work and in the mood after listening to the mailman's gossip.

  Melody knew her weaknesses. She was too easily distracted. Two or three small interruptions could throw her whole morning into a useless frustration. So she locked her door when she went to the music room, turned the unlisted telephone off, and everyone knew that you didn't try to contact Melody Connacher before one in the afternoon.

  She should be thankful that she was behind schedule this morning, that the postman would only interrupt her dressing, not her creative mood. She zipped the dressing gown back up and went downstairs to the door, throwing it open.