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Prologue 1950

Sometimes Crystal would wake to the roar, and know it wasn't the surf she heard, or a speeder on the night-darkened beach below her window.
Quietly slipping from the bed, she'd stand and watch the cars race the wind. Why, she often wondered, did Jonathan never hear, never see the cars? Why were they her special phantoms, ghost racers beside the sea?
Again and again they raced on the hard-packed sands, filling the quiet with the roar of their engines, vintage cars of the early 1900s: Oldsmobiles, Wintons, bullet-shaped Stanley steamers. The drivers wore leather helmets, goggles, scarves that fluttered in the breeze.
With a roar of sound, the race cars vanished into the distance, the noise of their engines just an echo. Then the waves washed the shore, and the tide swept away all trace of their tracks.
"Crystal? What is it?"
She sighed and shook her head. "Nothing."
"You had that dream again, didn't you?" His voice was sleepy, but concerned.
"I heard them. I saw them."
Jonathan rose and walked over to the window. He put his arms around her and gazed over her shoulder.
"No one else has ever seen them. No one else has ever heard them. But I'm not asleep. I'm not dreaming. Maybe they're my personal phantoms."
Crystal glanced up at him, smiling ruefully as she turned and slipped her arms around him. "Ghost racers beside the sea."
"I'm here. I'm not going away any more."
"I know." She was silent for a long moment, studying the way the window glass reflected the image of them with their arms around each other. Maybe the glass was kinder than a mirror, or perhaps it was just wishing or imagination, but they looked no older than they'd been when they'd first met nearly fifty years ago. "I never should have told you about seeing the racers."
Jonathan's arms tightened around her waist. "I'd never have gone away if I'd known it would do this to you."
"Don't say that. I wouldn't have let you stay. You loved racing. It was in your blood. Still is. It's part of you. I knew from the start that you always took your own path, followed your own dream. I admired that. I loved you for it." She paused. "Remember the first time?"
Jonathan smiled. "Mmm. Come back to bed."
Laughing, she slapped away his hands. "Not that first time. I mean the first time I saw you race. I thought you were so handsome in your driving clothes, the leather helmet, and the scarf at your neck that blew in the wind when you raced."
"Handsome, huh?"
"And daring. You went so fast! I was convinced the car was going to fly apart!"
Jonathan laughed. "Yeah? We went fifty miles an hour in some of those early races!"
"That was fast then!"
"Those were the days, weren't they? The cars go faster now, but I don't think it could be more exciting than it was back then. I know our grandson doesn't believe that."
"There'll never be anything as exciting as a beach race."
"No? Maybe Mark will change your mind. He's going to make his dream of building a speedway a reality. I can feel it."
She leaned her head back on his shoulder. "I wish his father could be here to see the way Mark's turned out. He'd be so proud."
"Mark has us to be proud of him."
"Who'd ever have thought all of it would come from our meeting when you came here for the beach races?"
"The family being involved in racing--or us?"
Crystal laughed softly. "All of it. A millionaire wasn't supposed to want to marry a hotelkeeper's daughter."
"Thank God people aren't so prejudiced today." He turned her in his arms and looked down into her eyes, luminous in the moonlight streaming in the window. "Even after all these years, you still look like that silver lady I won the first race here."
"Winged victory," Crystal mused, gazing at it sitting on the mantel. Naked, proud, and beautiful, the sculpture of a beautiful woman trod a wheel and held aloft the wreath of victory.
Jonathan stroked her cheek. "You were the only one who really understood me."
Crystal shook her head. "You always put me up on a pedestal. I didn't always understand. Sometimes I wanted to say, Why can't I be enough for you? Why do you have to have this passion for something like racing? How can you say you want to do something that can take you from me--not just for a little while, but forever?"
Jonathan stared at her, shocked. "You never asked me those questions before."
"I couldn't. I wanted you to do what made you happy." She touched her lips to his. "And I won't ask you now, in the middle of the night."
Laughing, Jonathan kissed her and drew her back to their bed. "Good." He wrapped his arms around her and she listened to the sound of his breathing slow, then deepen as he slept.
Crystal found heself slipping from the bed to return to the window. Leaning her forehead on the cool glass, she watched the tide ebb and flow.
Hadn't it only been yesterday? Weren't memories behind the corner you'd just turned, heard in the last word spoken, felt in the last beating of your heart?

Chapter One

1905

The clouds seemd so close up here. Crystal had always imagined she could reach out and touch them.
This was her secret place, thisquaint little pointy-roofed cupola that hugged the top story of the Hotel. Like having a gazebo, she mused as she leaned on the railing. But this gazebo looked out on sky and clouds. When she was a little girl she'd sometimes pretended that she was a princess looking out from one of the castle turrets. Here she could breathe in the salty tang of the nearby ocean and savor some precious peace and quiet.
All the world she'd ever known lay at her feet. Some called this strip of east coast Florida a peninsula with the Atlantic on one side, the river at the other. Some called it Paradise away from home and some, like Crystal, called it home. But the waving palms and balmy temperatures were for both groups of people.
There were other hotels for the winter guests, some right on the ocean. But none was like The Hotel Ormond. To Crystal, she was like a beautiful lady, welcoming the visitors whose train brought them across the river right into her waiting alabaster arms.
Today Crystal wasn't interested in peace and quiet. She shielded her eyes against the bright noonday sun and looked across the river to the mainland. For a moment, she thought she glimpsed a puff of smoke that would signal the approach of the train. Then she realized it was someone burning trash.
She checked her appearance again, tucking the lace trimmed shirtwaist into her dove gray skirt. Frowning at the slight fraying of one cuff, Crystal sighed. She needed new clothes, clothes different from these. Papa had tosee that she helped him run the Hotel and she needed to project a certain image.
But today wasn't the day to talk to him about it. Shrugging, she looked out at the clouds again.
Footsteps sounded behind her, someone climbing the wooden stairs to the cupola. Liam appeared, dressed in a starched white waiter's jacket and black trousers. The uniform set off his strong, handsome Irish features and made him look more mature than his twenty years.
"I thought I'd find you up here, dreaming," he said with a grin. "My, you're looking extra special today."
Crystal smiled. "You and your blarney, Liam MacAlester. You've seen my Sunday best a dozen times a dozen."
"You always look beautiful,"he said, joining her at the railing. "What is it you see in those clouds, lass?"
"You won't laugh?"
"Darlin', you know I never laugh at you. Haven't we always understood each other?"
"We used to, back when we were children. Remember how we'd come up here and tell each other stories?"
Liam nodded. "Tell me what you see in the clouds today."
"There, in that one," she said, pointing. "See, it's a castle. And over there, that one's the Sphinx."
"The what?"
"The Sphinx. You know, it's in Egypt. I saw it in one of the books in the Hotel library. It has the head of a man, and the winged body of a lion. One of the Greek myths said it was a monster that posed a riddle to passersby and killed them if they couldn't answer it."
Liam shook his head and the sunlight made his red hair glow like a flame. "I don't see it at all."
"I do. And I'm going to see it someday. The real one, I mean. I'm going to Egypt and see it, and the three pyramids, and the London Bridge, and castles in England, and --"
"Daydreams are wonderful, darlin'," Liam interrupted. "But that cloud castle's the only castle you'll be likely to see."
Crystal frowned. "You sound like Papa. Everyone has to have dreams, Liam, or they haven't got anything. Don't tell me you don't have dreams. I know what yours is. You've told me often enough you want to run the Hotel some day."
"We could share that dream, Crystal, you and me. You could see that in my eyes if you stopped looking at those clouds."
Crystal sighed and shook her head. "We can't share that, Liam. We want two different things. You want the Hotel. I want a home, a real one."
"But this place has been your home since we were children."
"No it hasn't. It hasn't been a home at all. Home is your own place, not a room you get moved out of when the Hotel's full. Home is privacy, where you can be yourself. Home's . . . home's a family and love, Liam."
"We all love you here, Crystal. Every one of us. Me most of all. You know that."
"It's not the same. If only Papa . . . " Crystal trailed off. "All I ever wanted was for him to love me. He's all the family I have since Mama left."
"Don't be like her, Crystal. She wanted too much."
"Did she?" The wind blew a strand of hair in her eyes and she brushed at it impatiently. "That's what Papa says. But maybe she just needed more than Papa wanted to give her. Maybe all she ever wanted was Papa's love, like me. Is that wanting too much? Is wanting more than this life here at the Hotel too much? Is wanting more than what somebody else decides you should have wanting too much?" She stopped, aware that she was getting upset.
"You're like that Sphinx, asking questions people can't answer." Liam moved to draw her into his arms. He looked down into her eyes. "I'm just saying don't make yourself unhappy trying to reach for the impossible, like those clouds, Crystal."
She pulled away, wishing she didn't put the pain in her friend's eyes as she did. "Everyone has to decide what's possible for himself, Liam. Maybe my dream is as possible as yours."
Shading her eyes, she gazed into the distance. Then she was straightening and tugging on Liam's sleeve. "Look there!"
"What is it you see this time? That Indian palace? What's its name, the Taj Mahal?"
Crystal ignored his gentle sarcasm, too excited to be hurt. "No, the train! Liam, there's the train! The winter guests are here!"
He shaded his eyes and peered into the distance. "Where?"
"There! It's about to come across the bridge!" She lifted her skirts and shot him a mischievous glance over her shoulder. "Race you down stairs!"
"Hey, you cheated!" he yelled after her.
Laughing, Crystal ran down the stairs, the pounding of her heart almost drowning out the clatter of Liam's steps close behind her.
Uniformed servants stood on the front steps of the Hotel. A man in his late forties stood ramrod-stiff near them. Crystal hurried down the wooden verandah toward him.
"Papa! The train's coming!"
He turned, frowning. "Crystal, act like a lady!"
Crystal slowed her steps and the gaiety faded from her face. "Yes, Papa." Chastened, she walked sedately to stand at his side.
The train whistle keened in the distance. Willard pulled out his watch. "Right on schedule." He closed the watch and slipped it back into his pocket. "Crystal, did you--?"
"Yes, Papa," she interrupted fondly.
"You don't even know what I was going to ask," he responded with some asperity.
"Everything's done, Papa. There's nothing to worry about."
"So you say," he told her, not sounding mollified. He coughed and took out a handkerchief.
She touched his arm. "Papa, are you sure you should be out of bed?"
Willard drew himself up striaght and looked affronted. "I have always greeted the guests to The Hotel Ormond, yoiung lady."
"Yes, Papa."
The train moved across the bridge over the river and the assemblage watched, murmuring, and shifting impatiently. Belching smoke, the train braked in front of the Hotel.
Passengers began alighting. Crystal watched the color, the confusion, loving every minute of it all. She and everyone at the Hotel had looked forward to this for months.
Conversation floated upthe stairs.
"Did you come for the auto races?"
"What a delightfully nobby suit, Mrs. Hyde. Do let me have the name of your designer."
"Shocking, just shocking what they've been calling theater lately, isn't it?"
"Which Brookfields are you talking about? The New York Brookfields or the Boston ones?"
"Poindexter, my boy, your fathertells me your studies at Harvard are going splendidly."
Willard held out his hand as the first visitor approached. "Welcome, welcome to The Hotel Ormond."
The man nodded, shook his hand, and moved on. Others did the same, some barely slowing their stride.
An elderly man who walked with a stiff military bearing vigorously pumped Willard's hand. "Bully weather, eh, Ashley?"
"Good to see you again, Major Bullard."
The man peered closely at Willard. "Looking a little peaked there, Ashley. You should go to Florida, get some sun." Guffawing at his own joke, he tipped his hat at Crystal. He started to walk toward the lobby, then, spying someone, called out in a booming voice, "Colonel Deering? Will it be a steam engine or a gas one that wins this year's beach races?"
Crystal watched as the twomen paced themselves off into respective corners and began arguing.
Willard turned to Crystal. "What did those two find to disagree about before automobiles and races became popular, I wonder?"
"Major Bullard's right, you know, Papa. You do look like you should be resting."
"I know what's best, Crystal."
She bit her lip at his curt tone. That's what you get for caing, she told herself. He never appreciates it. "Yes, Papa."
Two women, dowagers with haughty expressions, paused before Willard. A manservant stood behind them, holding two pampered Pekingese dogs.
"Mrs. Pruitt, Mrs. Talton, so good to see you ladies again," Willard told them. "I personally saw to the preprations of your suites. I think you'll be most pleased."
Liam came to stand beside Crystal. Softly, so only Crystal could hear, he whispered, "Ever notice how they look more like their dogs every year? Bark's worse than their bites, thank the Lord."
Crystal tried to stifle a smile. "The dogs or the ladies?" she whispered back.
The women left. Willard glanced over and frowned at Liam. "Why aren't you helping the guests with the luggage?"
With a wink at Crystal, Liam left them. Crystal watched automobiles being unloaded from the train, driven down a ramp, and parked nearby.
Willard strained to see over the people on the stairs. "Did Henry Ford make a reservation, Crystal?"
"Not when I checked half an hour ago, Papa."
He gave her a sharp look. "I've only asked a few times."
"Only a few hundred you mean, Papa," she said with some daring.
He chuckled then. "Remember how he spent the night in that "new-fangled" car of his when he couldn't afford a room here at the Hotel?" he asked, stroking his muttonchop whiskers. "You mark my word, he'll put the country on wheels, he will. Automobiles won't be just the toys of the rich like they are now. Ford's ideas, the mass production, the assembly line--why, they'll put one of those machines in everyone's reach. He--" Willard broke off as they heard a sharp cry of pain.
A man climbed the stairs rather quickly, saying over his shoulder, "Madame, if you'd be so good as to watch where you're placing your umbrella!"
"Then step aside if you're too old to move quickly, sonny!" enjoined the elderly woman behind him. Brandishing an umbrella with a wicked looking point on the end, she chuckled when he swiftly moved out of her way. She looked up and beamed at Willard. "Good day, Ashley. How's the world treating you?"
Without giving him time to answer, she turned to Crystal, pinched her cheek with bony fingers. Crystal smiled and tried not to wince.
"My, you've grown up and out. Really getting lovely, Ashley, must take after the other side of the family, eh?" She grinned at Crystal. "Have the young men in a tizzy this season, I'll wager. The young women, too, with envy." Hefting her umbrella, she strode past them. "Move aside there, coming through!"
Willard rolled his eyes heavenward. "My, isn't it good to have Mrs. Peabody here to liven things up." Then he spied a familiar figure. "Mr. Flagler, I didn't think you were coming when you didn't get off the train first. Welcome!"
"Looks like a good crowd!" observed Flagler, after the two men shook hands.
But for all his satisfaction, he didn't look that happy, thought Crystal, studying the man who was her father's boss. Then again, she'd never thought he looked happy, for all his wealth. And this time, he seemed older than he ever had.
He held up a slim, leatherbound book. "Clever advertising gimmick for the Hotel, this Seven Centers of Paradise, Ashley. Classy. The Ormond isn't as luxurious as my other hotels listed, of course, but we got a good crowd with the story of the auto races, didn't we?" He gazed at the Hotel, pride evident in his expression.
"Yes, sir. How long will you be staying, sir?"
"A few days. Then I'll be traveling south to check on the railroad extension to the Keys." He laughed shortly. "They call it Flagler's Folly. I want to see it finished before I die."
He wandered inside the Hotel, nodding at a guest here and there. The steady stream of guests trickled down, finally.
Crystal glanced down the stairs and watched as a man supervised the unloading of an automobile, the likes of which she'd never seen--sleek, obviously built for speed, yet it seemed so delicate. He took a handkerchief from his pocket to run it over the hood in a caressing motion. The wind lifted his hair as he worked, giving the pure black strands a blue gleam, like the wing of a blackbird. His features were sharp, what some might term aristocratic, his body tall and athletic. Body. Crystal's face flamed at the unaccustomed thought of a man's body.
The task completed, he turned and began climbing the stairs. As he drew closer, she tried to school her features, anxious not to betray her interest in him.
"Welcome to The Hotel Ormond," her father said gruffly, extending his hand. "Hope you enjoy your stay, Mr.--"
"Reynolds, Jonathan Reynolds," he responded, glancing at Crystal, then back at the man next to her, so that the hotelkeeper would be rude not to
make the introduction.
"My daughter, Crystal," Ashley told him formally.
Reynolds held out his hand and as Crystal shook it, their eyes met and held. There was frank interest in his eyes, but something more, an intensity in the way he looked at her, she couldn't help thinking. Dimly, she heard her father clear his throat. "You're the racer, aren't you?" she asked him.
"Yes, how did you know?"
"I read about the race you were in last year in Europe. Paris, wasn't it?"
"Let me get one of the boys to help you with that bag," Willard interrupted to say.
Reynolds released her hand. "That's all right, I can manage," he said without looking at the other man. "See you later."
He left them, walked toward the lobby, then, as he neared the door, he smiled back at Crystal.
"What did you do to make him notice you, young lady?" her father demanded the second Reynolds was out of sight.
Crystal looked up at him, startled. "Nothing, Papa."
"Don't you let what Mrs. Peabody said go to your head, you hear me? He's a guest and you're one of the staff. I won't have you behaving like your good-for-nothing mother!"
A guest approached, and her father turned, wearing a smile of welcome. The guest dispatched with wishes for a good stay, he rounded on Crystal, his expression angry again. "Go see to the kitchen. I'll take care of the remainder of the guests."
"But Papa, there are some things I need to take care of at the front desk--"
"Now!"
She wouldn't cry, she wouldn't, Crystal told herself. Tears were for children who could be hurt. She was a young woman now, able to deal with this. She walked away, slowly at first, through the lobby, then her steps were faster and faster until she was almost running as she reached the kitchen door.
"Miss Ashley!"
She'd only spoken to him once, but she recognized the voice. Fighting for composure, she took a deep breath. When she turned, her smile was in
place. "Yes, Mr. Reynolds?"
"Is something wrong?"
She shook her head. "Just a kitchen emergency."
He glanced back in the direction she'd come. "You're sure?"
"Yes, thank you. If you don't need anything I should be seeing to it."
She felt his eyes on her as she pushed through the kitchen door. Standing on the other side, her eyes filled with tears as the door shut behind her.
Papa's told me a thousand times I should know my place, she thought. Me on this side, people like Jonathan Reynolds and all those winter guests on the other.

Copyright 2001 by Barbara Cameron