Persuaded

by Alicia J. Chumney

  But before she could say anything else, Sophy started talking again. “See, Bob. I told you. Now, you must come to dinner sometime. Derek or Bob will find you on campus and let you know when.”

  “That really isn’t necessary.”

  “My Dear,” Bob interrupted again, waiting for one of them to open the front door.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” Sophy nodded her head, hurrying forward to open the door for her husband.

  Leaning closer towards her, Anne could hear him whisper, “Don’t you think it might be a bit awkward inviting our landlord’s daughter to dinner in her own home.”

  “But…”

  “I know that we are renting it, but Anne might feel uncomfortable being here when she’s not living here anymore.”

  “It’s really fine, Mr. Croft,” Anne interrupted, letting them know that she could hear them. “I’d love to come to dinner sometime, but I really can’t say when would be a good time,”

  she politely told them.

  Nodding his head, he said nothing except, “I told you to call me Bob. I’m only Mr. Croft in the courtroom. And now in the classroom.” Juggling the box in his hands, he asked, “Now, where do you want me to put this?”

  Popping open her truck, Anne smiled at him as he put the box down. Leaning closer, he whispered, “Don’t mind my wife. She may talk your ear off, but that’s only because she’s so friendly. And,” at this he narrowed his eyes, “if you were the girl that broke my brother-in-law’s heart over five years ago, I won’t hold that against you. He was almost twenty and you would have been…”

  “Eighteen. Almost nineteen. I had just graduated high school,” she softly admitted, cracking under Bob Croft’s gaze.

  “And getting engaged at that age is foolish in seventy percent of most cases. And that’s maybe opportunistic with the odds.” Looking at her carefully, Bob studied her. Nodding his head, Anne felt as if he had figured things out that she had not even said.

  “How did you know?”

  “It was a good guess,” he answered her. “But, keep in mind. Derek was the person who told us that Kellynch was for rent, not Ed. Derek can be…” he thought for a moment to find the right words. “He can be stubborn and determined. If you haven’t seen him on campus it’s because he doesn’t want you to see him.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Anne replied softly.

  “But Anne,” he added, “Derek hasn’t had a serious girlfriend in over five years either. He might flirt and date around, but,” and with that Bob shook his head. “My dear wife is concerned that her twenty-four-year-old brother will never get married. She forgets that I was twenty-seven when we married.”

  With those parting words, Bob ushered his wife back into the house. Sophy waving goodbye and reissuing her invitation to dinner despite Bob’s warning.

  Getting into her car, Anne drove out of the driveway and down the street for several minutes before pulling into the first parking lot she could find. She could have easily gone the rest of the year without knowing that Derek Worth had been attending the same college as her for the past several years.

  She would have preferred to not know that Robert and Sophy Croft were his brother-in-law and sister and that there was a one in four chance that Derek would be staying in her room!

  ‘I didn’t leave my tampons in the bathroom, did I?’ she worriedly thought, trying to remember if she had packed the box that had been underneath her sink or not. She should have checked when she had the chance.

  Or if she had left one behind the toilet that time Mary had knocked over the box in her haste to reach the toilet in time.

  Why her sister couldn’t throw up in the downstairs bathroom was beyond Anne.

  “Well,” she said to the empty car, “I know now.” Releasing a deep sigh, she closed her eyes and shook her head. “Better late than never, as some would say.”

  But she wouldn’t turn down a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream. Or Half Baked. Maybe both. Chocolate and cherries called to her.

  Climbing out of the car, she went into the store hoping that they carried at least one of those pints of ice cream. She could go to the student fitness center later and work it off.

  Chuckling, she thought to herself, Right. Like I’ve ever stepped foot in the fitness center except for that women’s self-defense class.

  Thankfully, the store had a pint of both. Grabbing them and a bag of pretzel sticks, she went to the registers and paid. All she needed to worry about would be getting her snacks upstairs to her room and in the mini fridge/freezer combo Mr. Musgraves had been generous enough to give her.

  “Happy Birthday to me,” she mumbled to herself as she deposited her bag next to the box of books.

  She ignored the fact that nobody had remembered except for Charles. Even Mary had whispered, “Is that really today?” to her husband when he had wished Anne a happy birthday.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Derek drew in a deep breath as he entered the room he suspected was Anne’s bedroom. The walls were painted a pretty green shade that he remembered, five years later, as being her favorite color.

  He felt as if he was being a glutton for punishment in picking Anne’s former room instead of picking the guest room where Bob had stashed all of the mirrors from the master bedroom. Of course, he could have picked the pale purple room that was crammed with furniture and, even though he could smell whatever was used to clean the room, the sickly-sweet smell of over-applied perfume still leaked through the lemon scent of cleaning solution.

  About three years ago he had attempted to date somebody who appeared to bathe in her body spray and it left him with constant headaches. There was no way that he was going to be able to sleep in that bedroom.

  That left what could only be Anne’s room. He could see where she had hung things on her walls, the unfaded patches covering more of the walls than the faded spots. For a moment he could imagine her room practically plastered with her drawings and photos.

  Derek wondered if she still used her camera to capture scenes she wanted to sketch out later.

  Rising up on the balls of his feet, he lifted himself the three inches he needed to see on to the top shelf in the closet. Curiosity had him wondering if Anne had left anything behind. He had no way of knowing that only two weeks before Anne had taken a step-ladder, climbed to the top, and pulled out a shoe box she had hidden in a corner on the very shelf he was examining.

  Seeing nothing, Derek dropped back down to his feet, ignoring the slightly disappointed feeling he felt in not seeing anything left behind. Instead, he returned to where he had put his shirts on the unmade bed and started removing the garbage bags he’d hung over the coat hangers. After a moment’s pause, he just grabbed the hangers, hung everything up still in the trash bags, and ripped the bags down the seams.

  While, internally, he felt as if he was wasting the trash bags, just the sheer destruction made him feel a tiny bit better.

  He’d have to go work out in the oddly pink home gym that he’d discovered three doors down.

  “I must be a glutton for punishment,” he mumbled quietly to himself as he hung up the last of his clothes.

  “Finding everything okay,” Sophy asked, poking her head into the doorway. “I wish you had been here yesterday when Anne Elliot stopped by to pick up some books she had left behind.”

  Derek let out a breath before he felt calm enough to answer his sister. That was the last name he had ever expected to cross her lips so soon after he had started moving his things into the house.

  “What did she want?” he finally managed to ask.

  “She had left a box of books in her closet,” Sophy repeated, nodding towards the opened doors where his shirts now hung.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. She seemed as if she wanted to get in and out of the place as quickly as possible.”

  “Well,” Derek hedged. “School does start soon.”

  “The end of the month.”

  “Right,”
he agreed, nodding his head needlessly.

  “Are you okay?” his sister asked, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes. “You are acting weird.”

  “It’s kind of weird being here, honestly,” he admitted.

  Nodding her head, Sophy thought she understood. “You are usually still in North Carolina with Ed right about now.”

  “Only he didn’t go this year. I’ve been spending time with Father.”

  Sophy merely wrinkled her nose. “But you’ve been back and forth.”

  “I took up a tutoring position to fill out some of my time. I’m only going to have four classes this semester. The other three that I need are only offered in the Spring semester,” he explained to his sister. “I’ll need to find an extracurricular just to enroll as a full-time student.”

  Nodding her head, “That seems like a good idea to get your out of your comfort zone,” Sophy stated.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Do you really think that Ed and I didn’t notice that you weren’t yourself five years ago when your girlfriend of a year ended things that summer?”

  Closing his eyes, he was aware that they didn’t know everything. “I was about to be shipped out,” he mumbled. “I asked her to marry me.”

  “Derek!”

  “What?”

  “You were nineteen!”

  “Why is that such a big deal? I was going to Italy! I didn’t know when I’d see her again!”

  “And she had just graduated from high school!”

  But before she said anything else, Sophy noticed that Derek wasn’t really paying attention to her and kept looking around the room. Narrowing her eyes, she abruptly changed the subject. “I invited Anne Elliot to dinner one night. She hesitated about accepting my offer, but…”

  Derek interrupted. “It might seem awkward.”

  “That’s what Bob said.”

  “I need to finish unpacking,” was all he said in response.

  After leaving her brother’s room, Sophy located her husband in the study.

  “Can you believe that I found six mirrors in this room!” Bob exclaimed from his place at the bookcase. “There was even a miniature one on this bookcase! And another on the fireplace mantel!”

  “It’s difficult to think that level-headed Anne came from Walter Elliot.”

  “Well,” Bob looked at his wife, “she came from her mother too.”

  After a long moment, she asked, “Bob?”

  “Yes, Dear?”

  “Do you think that Derek has met Anne before? I know she said she had six years ago, but…” she trailed off, still not completely certain where she was going with her question.

  “They have been on the same campus for several years,” he pointed out. “It’s not exactly a small campus.”

  “But we know how Derek can disappear if he really wants to.”

  “True.”

  “Anne reacted weirdly when I mentioned that Derek would be moving in. And Derek acted weird when I pointed out that he was staying in Anne’s room.”

  Moving over and wrapping an arm around his wife, Bob reassured her that whatever was meant to happen would happen regardless of her interference. “Don’t interfere,” he advised her. “You know how Derek gets.”

  And she did know just how stubborn her brother could get.

  He’d known that Anne Elliot was from this college town. He had, admittedly, applied to this college as a way to tempt himself. The odds of actually ever running into her on campus were slim to none; she was planning on going to School of the Art Institute of Chicago. And still, he applied.

  Call himself a glutton for punishment. He’d been doing it all afternoon.

  It wasn’t until he went to put the fitted sheet on his mattress that he knew for certain. In lifting the mattress to get a corner on a bit better, he saw the art school’s brochure peeking out from between the mattress and box spring. Exactly where Anne had hidden the last of her teenage dreams. Drawing in a deep breath, he put the brochure to the side and finished making his bed.

  Chapter Thirty

  Shortly after the art school brochure discovery, Derek seized the opportunity to get his first meeting with Anne over with. For the past three years, he’d carefully avoided her on campus, which was an interesting experience when they had the same Biology class. Thankfully, in his mind at the time, they didn’t have the same lab, but it might have been in his best interests if they had. Then that first meeting would have taken place two years after they had broken up instead of five years later.

  Charles had already let it slip that his sister-in-law was staying in his attic room, prompting Derek to ask about her.

  “Oh, Anne!” Charles grinned. “She’s a huge help.”

  “Anne?”

  “Anne Elliot. I think your sister is renting out her house.”

  “Oh. Right. Well, invite her along for the Trivia Night at the bar.”

  Nodding his head, Charles agreed. “I’ll let Mary know that she needs to call and book our babysitter early. Allie Grace is one of the few reliable babysitters we’ve found, but she’s certainly in demand.”

  “Mary?”

  “Oh yes. If she isn’t allowed to tag along, we’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “Understandable.” It fit into some of the things Anne had once told him about her little sister.

  Closing her eyes, Anne allowed herself the moment to breathe. It had been bad enough knowing that Charles had been meeting with Derek about setting up a tutoring schedule at the library, but to tag along to a bar?

  “Why does Anne get invited to Trivia Night at the local bar?” Mary whined. “I can’t go because Allie Grace is already babysitting for somebody else. We really need to find a more reliable babysitter, Charles.”

  She had no problem interrupting their discussion by saying, “Go. I’m fine babysitting for the night. You rarely have a date night and Trivia at the bar sounds like it’ll be a good escape from diapers and baths.”

  “But you’ll miss meeting Derek!” Mary cried out. “And he is renting our house. We have to meet him.”

  “His sister and her husband are renting the house,” Anne snapped. Mary’s wishy-washy behavior was already getting on her last nerve and she had only been in the house for three weeks!

  Chuckling, Charles adding, “Right. He told me that his sister insisted that he couldn’t take care of himself and should use the next two semesters to find himself a girlfriend.” Turning to Mary, he added, “Derek even said he hasn’t had a serious relationship since he was nineteen.”

  “Nineteen!” Mary gasped. “Why not? How does that even happen these days with online dating and all of the other options out there?”

  Shrugging, Charles admitted that he didn’t ask. “I assume because he had been deployed overseas.”

  “You should have asked.”

  “What brought that up?” Anne interrupted, curious.

  “Oh,” Charles hesitated. “I’d mentioned that I was married.”

  “Now why would you do something like that?”

  “Well, Mary, you were calling me in the middle of arranging a tutoring schedule. Derek wants to use tonight as a means to measure just how much random information is stored in my head and how quickly I can retrieve it. I thought I told you this last week when I met with him.”

  “Was that the day that Anne had come home with two cartons of ice cream and smuggled them up to her room without offering to share?” Mary innocently asked.

  “No,” he answered her, ignoring the look Anne was giving Mary. “It was two days ago. He claimed he was busy on the ninth and tenth.”

  Turning to look at her sister, Anne realized exactly where the last of her Cherry Garcia had gone. “You went into my mini fridge?”

  “Yes,” Mary shrugged.

  “But that’s my room!”

  “In my house.”

  Sighing, “In my father’s house, Mary,” Charles corrected her. “And your sister has the right to pri
vacy.”

  “Whatever,” Mary dismissed her husband’s point. “I wish you would have shared your ice cream instead of just sneaking it up into your room.”

  “I would have shared if you had only asked.”

  “Whatever,” Mary claimed again. “The boys are both in bed. You should be fine alone for the night.”

  As soon as Charles closed the door behind them, sending Anne an apologetic look as he left, Anne started to wonder if Mary had purposely not called Allie Grace until that afternoon. It wouldn’t have been the first time Mary had opted for the ‘free’ babysitter route instead of the paid babysitter.

  A moment later, Anne heard Baby Henry – because he was Baby Henry now that Mary was gone – let out a cry. Releasing a deep breath, she hurried up the stairs aware that if he cried too much, Little Charles would soon wake up as well.

  That was the last thing she wanted to deal with.

  Derek admitted to examining the group to see if Anne had come with them. Charles Musgraves was flanked by his wife, Mary – the person who could only be Anne’s younger sister – who appeared to be eying him carefully in return.

  If he recalled correctly, Anne had described her sister as a self-absorbed attention seeker who took on their father’s high regard for himself and attempted to brandish it to gain Mr. Elliot’s approval.

  He also recalled that it never worked. He wondered if her getting pregnant right after high school when she was ‘taking a semester break from school,’ and visiting Anne on campus to see if she wanted to join her sister in college, had been planned.

  It didn’t take much to get Charles to talk about Mary and that fateful party he had convinced Anne and Mary to tag along too. It wasn’t as if the ‘bartender’ had been checking IDs and hand stamps like he should have been.

  He had expected somebody that looked a little more like Anne, only Mary’s hair was shorter, straighter, and much thinner. No flyaway curls that begging to be touched, constantly tamed by a ponytail holder or in a bun.