Love by Design: A Heartswell Harbour Romance

by Mavis Williams

  He had fought for a long time to maintain his relationship with Delia, feeling that he couldn’t disappoint her like he seemed to disappoint everyone else.

  It was over. It had been over for a long time. He was being more of a disappointment by staying with her than he would be for leaving her.

  His thoughts churned through his head for the rest of the morning, one moment feeling strong, the next plunging into despair. He reached for his phone umpteen times, intending to call her, to apologize, but every time he stopped just before hitting the button.

  He didn’t love her.

  He probed cautiously around the hole her absence would leave in his life. He was surprised to feel only numbness, like a tooth with the freezing still in.

  Robin found him in the early afternoon, sitting at his desk staring out the window.

  “It’s quite a view,” she said, tapping on his open door and startling him out of his reverie. All Heartswell Harbour was spread before them like a shiny quilt edged with sparkling blue water.

  “I love the ocean.” He kept his gaze toward the window until he could convince his face to smile. “Maybe I should have been a sailor.”

  “A woman in every port?” she said, standing beside him.

  “Something like that,” he sighed. “But if they’re all Delia’s, I may just have to drown myself.”

  He tried to laugh, but it sounded forced.

  “Listen, I just got a text from Rosalee.” She held her phone out and read the text. “Windex on sale. Bought five. Will meet you at yours. 5pm.”

  She lowered her phone and blinked at him. He knew she was trying to distract him from thoughts of drowning, and he grabbed at the life-line with both hands.

  “That’s a lot of glass cleaner,” he said, looking at his windows.

  “That’s a lot of Rosalee.” She sighed. “I can’t face an evening of window washing. I want to take Izzy to the park, and make supper, and maybe, maybe answer some emails and do some work tonight.”

  “Let’s bring her here.” He could do this. He could have this conversation without thinking about wrapping his arms around her and kissing her.

  Wait. He could kiss her. He was single.

  “You’re not listening,” she groaned. “Windows here or windows at my place. I don’t do windows.”

  He stared at her. What an asshole. He’s been single for half a day and already he was moving on. His father had never moved on from the loss of his mother. There had to be a happy medium somewhere in between.

  No kissing.

  “But your new employee, Great Aunt Rosalee does do windows, and oh-my-goodness!” He slapped his hand on his cheek in mock despair. “Just look at this mess!”

  Robin blinked at him again.

  “Catch up with me here, kiddo,” he said. “How can you possibly try to design new window treatments when the glass is so filthy? You simply must have clean windows if you are to work your creative magic. Follow me?”

  “How does spending the evening washing your windows help me with my Auntie issue?” she said blankly.

  “And you look so clever.” He smiled at her and patted her hand. “Tell Auntie to come over here, right now. Bring the Windex. Clean the windows. Dad is here. He will see her. He will be impressed with her... diligence. I predict a fall wedding.”

  “Oh!” Robin brightened.

  “Duh.”

  “I get it!” She pulled out her phone again. “You’re a crafty one, you are.”

  She turned to leave the room, texting as she went. She paused in the doorway, looking at him hesitantly. The sun caught gold shimmers in her hair reminding him of the illuminated letters of old law books. Beautiful and purposeful, unaware of her own impact on an otherwise mundane page.

  “Delia doesn’t deserve you, Hudson.”

  He wished he could believe that.

  Chapter 14

  “I couldn’t just walk by, could I?” Rosalee deposited two plastic bags on the floor in front of Mrs. Davies’ desk, spray nozzles poking out of the tops. “Twenty percent off. You know how expensive good glass cleaner is?”

  Mrs. Davies nodded.

  “And then when Robin texted me with your window emergency, well, it was like fate was playing a hand, wasn’t it?” Rosalee peeled off her jacket and laid it over a nearby chair.

  “Window emergency?” Mrs. Davies asked, looking askance at the gleaming windows of the waiting area. Rosalee followed her gaze.

  “Oh, yes, I see what she means now,” Rosalee approached the window, pressing her face inches away from the glass. “Filthy.”

  Mrs. Davies frowned.

  “Do you often do cleaning jobs for your great niece, Mrs. Martin?”

  “Oh, my dear, call me Rosalee,” she tittered. “You can call me Auntie if you like, almost everyone calls me Auntie. I guess that’s what you get if you never have children of your own, but you raise everyone else’s.”

  “Rosalee.” Mrs. Davies nodded.

  “My dear friend, Mrs. Crawley? Well I practically raised her daughter Patricia, and Patricia calls me Auntie.” Rosalee stood eagerly in front of the desk. “And can you believe it? Now, I’m not one to tell tales, but Patricia’s husband has been an absolute cad recently...”

  Robin walked into the office and cringed as she saw the look on Mrs. Davies’ face. It was a cross between fascination and bewilderment.

  “Auntie, you’ve arrived!” She took a quick breath to calm herself. Hudson better be right about this. “Let’s get you busy, shall we?”

  She smiled stiffly at Mrs. Davies who did not smile back.

  “We have a custodial staff who take care of our window washing needs, Robin, or were you intending to have your Great Aunt rappel from the rooftop to complete your questionable task?” Mrs. Davies glared at Robin. They both turned toward the boardroom door as it opened, and the senior Mr. Proxly strode into the room.

  “Mrs. Davies, I need duplicates of these files—” His eyes widened as Rosalee bustled toward him. Robin was certain she saw fear in his eyes. “Mrs. Martin. How lovely.”

  He held the file between them like a shield.

  Rosalee was undeterred.

  “Hello again, Mr. Proxly,” she gushed, raising a Windex bottle like a gun. “I have come to clean!” She squeezed the trigger and a fine mist of glass cleaner drifted over the file in his hand.

  He shook it off and looked grimly at Robin. Mrs. Davies coughed slightly but Robin refused to look at her. She didn’t want to look at Auntie either. She wanted to crawl into the hole she growing on the floor in front of her.

  “We have a custodial staff—” he began.

  “Oh, it’s no problem.” Rosalee grabbed one of the bags of cleaners and stepped primly toward the boardroom. “I’ll have those windows sparkling in a jiffy. You won’t even know I’m here.”

  Mr. Proxly smiled, tightly. Like he was swallowing a lemming.

  They stood in silence, listening to the sound of Rosalee talking to herself from the depth of the boardroom. Robin sniffed. Mrs. Davies cleared her throat. Mr. Proxly put the slightly damp files down on Mrs. Davies’ desk.

  “I think I’ll just...” He glanced at the boardroom doors, then back to Rosalee’s jacket draped on the chair. “I’m going out. For a bit.” He seemed to be judging the volume of glass cleaner he could see in the remaining bag on the floor. “I may not be back in until tomorrow.”

  The door closed behind him as Rosalee poked her head out of the board room.

  “Silly me,” she said. “I forgot to bring cloths. This is going to take longer than I expected!”

  Robin died a little inside as Mrs. Davies rose to her feet and opened a small door at the end of the room. She took out a roll of paper towel and handed it silently to Rosalee.

  “Lovely!” Rosalee chirped. “Where did Mr. Proxly go? I was going to ask him about a legal issue regarding Mrs. Crawley’s poor daughter. Mrs. Davies, I was just telling you how her husband has been simply...”

  Robin wan
ted to scream, but all she could do was take Rosalee by the elbow and escort her back into the board room, where they spent the afternoon cleaning the already spotless windows.

  Chapter 15

  Early the next morning Hudson lifted his head off his desk and rubbed the dent in his cheek left by the day-timer he had used as a pillow. He blinked blearily. He’d been run over by a bus. A bus driven by angry women in high heels, demanding his credit card and his undivided attention. He blinked the unsettling dream away. It had been just one woman prancing through his subconscious all night.

  Delia.

  He had not gone home last night. It wasn’t cowardice, he just needed time to sort through his thoughts before having a very serious conversation with the woman he had planned to marry. He struggled to remember what had attracted him to her in the first place. It was as if Robin had opened a doorway that threw a whole new light over Delia. A very unflattering light.

  He dragged his cell phone across the desk toward him and unmuted it, squinting at it in the dim early morning light. He clicked off his desk lamp in favor of the gentler glow coming through the windows as the sun rose over Heartswell Harbour.

  Five texts.

  It was a miracle the poor phone hadn’t melted under the assault of Delia’s wrath.

  He scrolled quickly through the messages, feeling bad that she had probably been worried about him. Thoughtless, he chastised himself. He had been so conflicted about facing her that he hadn’t even thought what she might be going through with him not coming home for the night.

  His lips grew into a tight line as he scanned the messages which started out angry, then became petulant before ramping back up to angry again.

  “Fine. Don’t come home. See if I care.”

  That was the last message, received at 2:24 am. Apparently worry wasn’t in Delia’s repertoire of emotions. Outrage and disappointment were her specialties.

  “Be home shortly.” He texted, dreading the inevitability of the conversation ahead of him. He hated conflict, but that was why he was in this position now. He stood up and stretched, his back creaking in resistance. Looking down over the main street of Heartswell, he saw his father getting out of his car. Even from four stories up, Bernard Proxly looked purposeful. Hudson recognized the determined stride that characterized his father.

  Bernard Proxly would never need to sort his thoughts. His father’s thoughts were born already classified and ordered. Unlike his son’s.

  Bernard crossed the street and went into the little coffee shop across from their building. He would order a black coffee, and a tall latte for Mrs. Davies. Peppermint tea on Tuesdays. Chamomile on Wednesdays. Hudson shook his head and smiled. He was such a creature of routine and dependability, his orders never varied, and Mrs. Davies was never without a warm beverage to start her day.

  Hudson was a loose cannon in comparison. He let Delia run all over his life in stiletto heels, spending his money and chewing up his emotions like loose change. He had spent far too long trying to please her and he couldn’t blame his father for his own unwillingness to stand firmly in one spot and draw a line in the sand. As Robin had reminded him, he was not his father.

  “I am definitely not you, Dad,” he muttered to the window. “And I’m not Delia, either.”

  Delia’s vision of their lives together lacked warmth and humor... and love. He wasn’t willing to be an accessory for Delia to stuff into a diamond-studded purse to match her latest outfit.

  He took a deep breath, the aroma of Windex tickling his nose.

  Robin.

  Robin was the reason he was suddenly unwilling to tolerate Delia’s tantrums, after enabling her bad behavior for so long.

  Robin of the beautiful eyes and the chestnut hair and the unfailing certainty in everything she did. She approached every moment fearlessly, unabashedly. Without knowing she was doing it, she was revealing layers of himself he had been hiding in fear of disappointing the people he loved.

  His father.

  Delia.

  The memory of his mother.

  By saying yes, to all things, he had become a disappointment. Watching Robin thunder through her days showed him that he was being the biggest disappointment, to himself.

  And there was Izzy. She had her mother’s eyes, and her mother’s bold determination.

  If Hudson ever wanted to be a father, how could he be a good role model if he allowed the world to roll over him like a freight train at every turn?

  He smiled again, thinking of Robin’s eyes.

  He saw his father coming out of the coffee shop, two paper coffee cups in his hands. Mrs. Davies arrived from the parking lot down the road. His father saw her approaching and walked down the sidewalk to meet her.

  They greeted each other and stopped for a moment to talk.

  Mrs. Davies lifted her hand to his father’s cheek for a moment, and Hudson had to rub his eyes to make sure he was seeing it right. When he looked back, they were walking side by side toward the office building.

  Must be seeing things. That’s what you get when you sleep on your desk.

  His phone buzzed and he groaned.

  Delia.

  Time to reframe the suffocating still-life he had chosen to live in favor of a more expressive canvas. He grinned. Robin would love that. Artsy-fartsies loved art metaphors.

  “Delia,” he said, clearing his throat as he spoke into the phone. She had answered on the first ring. “It’s me.”

  “I’ve changed the locks.”

  “You— what?” He shook his head. It was ridiculously early in the morning, there was no way she could have had a workman—

  “Yesterday. Yesterday, Hudson, which was the day you kicked me out of your office.”

  “You changed the locks on my condo?”

  “Our condo, Hudson. My name is on the lease too, remember?”

  “Delia, you can’t just—” He floundered, not sure what she could and couldn’t do but knowing his whole ‘new canvas’ metaphor paled in comparison to the wrecking ball of Delia Wentworth as an ex-fiancée.

  “Can. Did. It’s over.”

  There was silence on the line. He pictured her standing at the island in the kitchen, drumming her manicured talons on the countertop, waiting for him to cave. To beg, or plead, or offer to buy her something.

  “I want the dog,” he said.

  She breathed like a dragon protecting a mound of treasure. He would either be blasted with fire or ripped into pieces, and there was no one around to sing songs about him once he was gone.

  “Deal,” she snapped, and the line went dead.

  Chapter 16

  Robin parked the car near the wharf and helped Izzy out of her car seat. Rosalee sat primly in the front seat, staring straight ahead. Robin sighed. A sulking three-year-old she could handle, but not a sulking sixty-year-old.

  “Auntie, please?” She leaned her head down through the open car door, one hand on Izzy and one reaching for her purse.

  “You know how I feel about leaving a job unfinished,” Auntie said, refusing to look in Robin’s direction. “Those boardroom windows looked marvelous when I finished with them. Marvelous. I don’t see why I couldn’t be allowed to finish the job I started, that’s all.”

  “I’ve explained to you, Auntie.” She had only herself to blame. She had created the monster, after all. “Mr. Proxly has very strict rules about confidentiality and who is allowed into his personal office space and who is not.”

  “As if I would betray any confidence of anything I might catch a glimpse of in his office,” Auntie huffed. “Why, Mrs. Crawley calls me the Fort Knox of confidentiality. Fort Knox. Nothing gets out. My lips are sealed.”

  She pressed her mouth shut in proof, folding her hands with firm finality on her lap.

  “Auntie, are you going to come into the bookstore with us?” Robin asked as Izzy tugged on her arm.

  “C’mon Mumma, c’mon!” Izzy chanted. “I sees Gabe. Hi Gabe!”

  Several other parent
s were arriving at the Book Nook, the local bookshop where story time was one of Izzy’s favorite Saturday afternoon activities. Feeling guilty for working so much, Robin had promised Izzy a trip to the shop, followed by a playdate in the playground with her best buddy, Gabe. Robin waved to Gabe’s mother as Izzy danced on her tiptoes with excitement.

  “Auntie?”

  “I choose to sit here,” Rosalee said. “You did promise to take me for groceries after, and so I shall await your return, although I don’t know why I bother to get groceries at all since I certainly don’t need any more glass cleaner as my services are no longer required.”

  Robin looked to the heavens as she closed the car door, but since no bolt of lightning struck her, she had no choice but to continue with her day. She should have left Auntie at home, but she had felt so badly about setting her up with the window experiment, only to snatch it away again. After a rather terse conversation with Mr. Proxly, he made it very politely clear that he would hire the appropriate people for the appropriate jobs in his office. Her job was color, fabric and paint.

  She was nettled that Hudson had disappeared just when she was most afraid she was about to be fired. No one had seen him for the last few days and Robin missed his presence in the office, even though he was a total chucklehead.

  He was such a nice chucklehead though.

  She glanced back over her shoulder to the car as Izzy dashed into the bookstore. Auntie sat stiffly in the passenger seat like a pillar of indignation.

  Izzy came by her stubbornness honestly.

  IT WAS DARK IN THE bar, even though it was a sunny Saturday afternoon. Hudson was pretty sure his father would not sympathise with how good rum tasted in a dingy bar when you’d spent three nights sleeping in your office chair because your fiancée had changed the locks and thrown your collection of ceramic lighthouses out the window of your tenth floor condo.

  “Ceramic lighthouses, eh?” Mel grumbled.

  “Some of them belonged to my mother.” Hudson explained to the stocky bartender. “I just kept picking them up over the years, you know?”