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The message light on her bedside phone at the inn was flashing when she entered the room. For a moment, she worried that the message was from Peter, calling to demand that she stop gallivanting around the North Shore and come back to Boston where she belonged, as he’d said yesterday. But he would have contacted her on her cell phone, not the hotel’s phone. So would James, or her parents. Or Claudia’s friend Lenore if, God forbid, she’d changed her mind about allowing Shomback-Sawyer to cart away her grandmother’s belongings. The business card Diana had left with Lenore had Diana’s cell number printed on it.
She tossed her purse on the bed, reached for the phone and pressed the button for messages. “Hi,” came a man’s voice, deep and soft yet slightly gruff, like pebbles wrapped in velvet.
Her memories of kissing that man came rushing back, swamping her, warming her deep inside.
“I never got your phone number,” Nick’s message continued, “so I’m trying the OB number instead. I know I—we—well, whatever. I’m refereeing a b-ball game at the community center this evening. Middle school kids, but they’re pretty good. I thought you might like to see what I do for a living. At least some of what I do. The game starts at six-thirty—it’s a school night, so the kids play an early game. Anyway, I hope I’ll see you there. This is Nick, by the way.” He recited a phone number, said goodbye, and disconnected.
Diana listened to the queue of instructions following his message, then pressed the button to replay it. This time, she jotted down his number, and laughed when he said, “This is Nick, by the way.” As if he’d had to identify himself. She would know his voice anywhere. Even if he’d whispered, if he’d had laryngitis, if his voice had been filtered through one of those identity-disguising machines so he came out sounding distorted, she would have known the caller was Nick.
She sank onto the bed, trying to ignore the fact that the mere sound of his voice could fill her with a warmth intense enough to melt her soul—and her resistance. He’d contacted her despite her having fled from him yesterday. Had she not made herself clear? Or had he seen past her rejection and sensed that behind her words lurked a desperate yearning for him?
She recalled that she hadn’t said no to him last night. She’d said, “I have to think.” He probably believed a full day of thinking was sufficient and he could approach her again.
She shouldn’t go to the game. Honestly, why would anyone who wasn’t a parent of one of the players want to sit through a basketball game played by a bunch of thirteen-year-olds? What she should do, she chided herself, was put her damned ring back on her finger, call Peter and tell him she’d be back in Boston tomorrow.
Or return to Boston without putting the damned ring back on. Because whenever she went home, whether it was tomorrow or next week or next year, she was going to have to confront the fact that something was changing. She was changing.
She couldn’t shake the suspicion that if she tried to put the ring back on, it wouldn’t fit.
Changes Page 11