Keeping Katie

by Stella Quinn

  That process had started. Talking things out with Veronica, making the decision to purchase the other half of Uncle Roly’s…her house.

  She was feeling her two feet planted a little more firmly on the ground every day now, and soon she’d be ready to go see Anton. Maybe find out what all these feelings she had for him really meant.

  Until then, Page Seventeen was the perfect way for her to spend a little more time getting to know him. She knew how much he loved the photos he included on the page…now she could try and work out why.

  She smoothed the page out across the top step, anchoring it down with her teapot. On the top left, in a curly, old-fashioned font, sat the Dear Anna column and beneath it, a notice. Anna has just announced she is retiring from the Agony Aunt business, and this will be her last column in the Cove to Coast Herald. She wishes all her letter writers the best of futures.

  Giving it up? He’d be happy about that, she hoped. Hadn’t he said he’d been reluctant to take it on?

  She dropped her eyes to the first letter. Some teenager named Grossed Out 15 was having an existential crisis because their mom insisted on kissing them goodbye every morning at the school gate.

  Ouch, that’s a tough one, wrote Anna. Two suggestions: one subtle, one hardcore. You could go on a fitness kick and tell your mom you’re walking to school…or maybe just the last few blocks if you live too far away. Or, my young, brave, grossed out fifteen-year-old, if you’re up to it, the truth is always a good strategy. Tell mom all that kissy-at-the-gate stuff is embarrassing you, but you still love her, and suggest a new goodbye habit instead, like a fist bump. Mom may love that, and you won’t know unless you speak up. Yours, Anna Tugoy.

  Speaking up…not a relationship strategy Katie had ever mastered in the past, but one she meant to embrace in the future. Leaving the rest of the Agony Aunt column for later, she glanced over to the right-hand side crossword section.

  Fifteen across, eight letters: Let’s all go in to get her, she read. Oh! Well, for the first time ever, she could see the answer. To get her…together, meaning all. She looked up at the sky, expecting thunder clouds to be rolling in, a lightning strike at the very least. She, Katie, had solved a clue!

  Typical. Now that she and Vee had agreed the weekly clue lesson could stop, she was finally getting the hang of these suckers.

  The section that took up the bottom half of the page was the Happy Snaps section. She was about to flip past it and keep going through the rest of the paper, when she recognized the image.

  The photo was taken with a panoramic setting and covered green patchwork fields, towering stands of cypress and oak, and the town of Redwood Cove nestled between cliff and ocean. This view…it was her view, from the observation deck at the control tower.

  But how—?

  She knew who had taken it the second she started reading the blurb. Happy Snaps which appear here are chosen from Cove to Coast Herald’s Reel Life account. Upload your scenic photo and tell us why your photo makes you happy.

  Photo by Anton Price.

  What? No anagrammed name preserving his anonymity? No jokes? No game?

  The place where I took this photo is important to me because this is where I have hidden a small, velvet box. In the box is a ring. On the ring is an engraving. I wasn’t sure what to have engraved on the ring at first.

  I’ll let you into a secret: I have a thing for words. I like playing with them, twisting them, turning them in and out and finding all the nuances and innuendoes that like to hide within ...

  But then I knew: the words I needed to choose were not for a game, or a puzzle, because love is not a game.

  Love is truth and honesty and forever.

  If you’re reading this—and you know who you are—come and find your ring.

  Katie pressed a hand to her heart. Did this mean...? Was he...?

  Oh boy.

  “Rose?” she called.

  Her golden dog trotted in from the dark of the back garden, a tendril of rose bush clinging to her whiskers.

  “We’ve got an emergency, Rose. Help me find my car keys.”

  The airport was still dark when she pulled into the car park below the tower, the only glow coming from thin pools of gold below the streetlights. Soon the ticket agents would be arriving, the baggage handlers, the couple who ran the snacks kiosk, but for now, airplanes gleamed in the moonlight from their tidy row beside the terminal. Baggage trucks were tucked away in their sheds, mobile stairs and catering lifts were out of sight, even the windsocks dangled quietly from their poles.

  If only her heart was as quiet.

  It wasn’t. It had galloped into a frenzy when she had read Anton’s message. What if she hadn’t read the paper? What if she’d missed that paragraph? What would he have done then?

  She fumbled with her keys at the door to the tower. How he had wrangled his way into the restricted space of the control tower was a mystery for another day, but she bet the solution began with an A and ended with an N, D, and Y.

  The elevator hummed as it sped upwards, a noise she suspected her strung-out nerves were also making in some frequency she couldn’t detect. The doors slid open, she moved a step forward, three steps to the right, and there she was, at the solid security door which led to the view...and whatever else might be out there waiting for her.

  Well. Now or never. She found the key on her office set, unlocked the door and stepped out.

  The first thing she noticed was the breeze. It lifted her hair and carried with it the salt of the ocean, the cool of the giant sequoias guarding Griffin State Park. The second thing was the small, dark box sitting alone in the center of the neatly swept floor.

  She sat cross-legged on the floor to inspect it.

  She could open it here, alone, with her little patch of California spread out before her, and the dawn pushing fingers of light through her little patch of sky…but she was tired of being alone.

  She picked up the box, shoved it into the pocket of her jacket and jumped to her feet.

  She knew exactly where she wanted to be when she opened this box and read whatever was engraved inside. And she knew exactly who she wanted to have beside her when she did.

  Chapter 30

  Every driveway Anton passed seemed to have a copy of the Cove to Coast Herald rolled up in its driveway. Old dogs woofed at him and Prince as they ran by, curtains twitched, and the smells of bacon and maple syrup hung in the air by the roadside apartment blocks.

  But no one was up yet, reading their paper.

  He hurtled up the hill that led to town, dragging a tired Prince beside him. “Sorry, buddy. Being impatient makes my legs go faster. What say I buy us a donut at Sweets and Treats and you can have a tiny, tiny piece.”

  It was hard to tell what Prince’s thoughts were on the matter, because the dog was panting like a steam engine.

  “Ha!” he said, startling a middle-aged man in worn boxers who had emerged from his house and was in the process of collecting his newspaper from his dew-soaked lawn. So, someone was reading the paper. “Morning,” he huffed, and kept on charging up the hill.

  The question was, how many residents on Prospect Road were up reading their newspapers?

  Andy had promised to text him if Katie turned up at the control tower. Persuading the old fellow to let him into the tower had taken a full set of signed original Anton Price hardbacks, but he’d been happy to part with them. Andy’s wife got to be happy with her new books, and he got what he wanted. An opportunity.

  He was so busy rethinking his plans, hoping he hadn’t forgotten something important, that he didn’t remember he’d promised the dog a donut until he’d passed the café and was on the final stretch home. “Let’s have some water,” he said. “Then we’ll walk down. I promise. I need to keep busy today, pal, which means you do too.”

  He turned into the track that led to his garden gate, and Prince lunged ahead of him, nearly pulling his arm from his socket. “Whoa there, buddy. We use our manners, remem
ber?”

  But then he saw what had piqued Prince’s attention. Rose the golden retriever was sitting in his garden admiring the ocean view.

  And behind her, seated in the sun beside his pot of geraniums, was Katie.

  He looked amazing when he ran. Tall, strong, a little windswept. Like an eighteenth-century warrior who’d shucked off his armor for the day and somehow ended up in high-tech running gear. And this man—this kind, successful, thoughtful man—was into her.

  Her. Katie Shields, responsible worker, dedicated dog behavioral therapist, and world-class failure at word games.

  It seemed too good to be true, which had to be why she hadn’t seen it. She was a logical person. Logical people didn’t believe in happy endings where the Hollywood warrior picked the lonely pumpkin.

  Wait. She was mixing her metaphors. Where the Hollywood warrior picke—

  All thoughts of metaphors slid from her brain as Anton let himself into his garden gate and dropped to the ground beside her. “Katie,” he said, breathing hard from his run. “Man, am I glad to see you.”

  She wasn’t sure she knew what to say. How often did a pumpkin get to be wooed so sweetly as Anton had wooed her? The photograph. The words. The velvet box. She held out her hands, and he wrapped them in his.

  “You know, I’ve been daydreaming about this moment for hours,” he said, “but in my daydream I was looking a whole lot less sweaty, and more groomed and...er, chiseled.”

  She snickered. That was what she had needed, a reminder that he may be the love of her life, but he was also her very best friend. “Chiseled? Is that a word they teach you in thriller writing school?”

  “Thriller Writing 101. The hero is always chiseled.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry I ran away from you last week.”

  He squeezed back. “I’m sorry, too.”

  “I had...some stuff to think through. Stuff that had been building up for a long time. It was getting in the way of me being able to see what was going on around me.”

  He smiled, a lopsided one that held some of the fear she could feel herself. “Like the overgrown crossword lummox you were hanging out with, who was falling in love with you?”

  “Yeah,” she said softly. “Like that.”

  Anton’s eyes crinkled at the corners when he looked at her. She loved that.

  She loved the way his house was now littered with dog toys and water bowls and chewed-up agapanthus stems, and he didn’t care a whit.

  His eyes dropped to the velvet box resting on her lap. “You opening that anytime soon?”

  “I’m going to, but I think I already know what it says.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You have a spy in the Cove and Co. Jewelers?”

  She grinned. “You’re a funny guy, Price. No. I know what it says because I think I finally understand what you, and Andy, and Veronica, and even my rat of an ex-boyfriend—”

  “Who we never need to mention ever again.”

  “—have been trying to tell me. It’s not the words, it’s how they’re said. It’s not the logical one plus one, it’s the whole great bubbling mess: mistakes and love and fun and crazy and all of the stuff I’ve been closing out ever since Uncle Roly died. I tried to pack everything into neat little packages, then closed myself off to life.”

  “I wish I’d had a chance to meet your uncle.”

  “Yeah,” she said, grateful when he pulled her in close so she could lean her head against his broad, warm chest. “Me too. I think after his funeral, living in his house with Veronica…I transferred my need to be cared for to Vee. It wasn’t fair.”

  “But understandable.”

  His voice rumbled through his t-shirt when he spoke, through the thin fabric, through the thinner fabric of her blouse, and right into her heart. It helped her find a way to admit how vulnerable she’d been. “When I think of all the upset I caused, just because my adult sister didn’t get in touch with me for a week. No wonder the police weren’t saddling up a posse when I went to report her as a missing person.”

  The last time she and Anton had talked about how she had dealt with her sister’s absence, she’d pushed him away. Someone she’d loved had told her a truth she was frightened of hearing, and she’d lashed out instead of learning.

  Someone she loved. She looked up into Anton’s dear face. “I think I’m ready to open my box.”

  “Okay,” he said, as Prince and Rose quit their wrestling and lined up on either side of him, sitting up as proudly as groomsmen.

  The velvet was the deep blue of the ocean just on dusk. She ran her hands over it, feeling the leather of the underlying box creak as she pried the hinge open.

  A ring.

  A ring!

  And not just any old ring, but a ring for her. It was simple and gold, and a stone so clear it caught the sunlight as it flickered up from its satin bed. “It’s too perfect to touch,” she breathed.

  “Allow me,” Anton said, and he reached long fingers into the box and pulled out the ring. “I’d kneel, but…” He shrugged and gave her a half smile from his position sitting cross-legged across from her, their knees touching.

  “What does it say?” he said, a tremor in his voice as though the sea breeze had stolen some of his strength.

  This was her moment. She’d tricked herself into believing that being alone wasn’t lonely; that being alone was safer than being hurt again when loved ones left. She’d not understood that without a little risk, she’d never know reward.

  Anton had pushed her out of that foolish thinking. He’d believed in her need to find her sister, he’d supported her, he’d been there and now she knew why. Finally, she understood all the clues he’d thrown her way.

  She closed her eyes. “Before I guess what the words on the ring say, I have something to say for myself.”

  He took a breath. “What?”

  “I thought I would be safe from being hurt again if I closed off my heart.”

  He held her hand. “I know, honey.”

  “You pried it open. Even though I tried not to let you.”

  He smiled, a half-grin that would have melted her heart if it hadn’t already turned itself into syrup. “I was giving it my all, Katie.”

  “Your all was my everything. I love you, Anton. And I’m telling you that with my heart wide open.”

  “Oh, Katie.”

  He was gathering her to him, but she held him back. There was more she needed to say. “I’m no good at words and games and reading people, I never have been. I’m better at facts than at emotions, which is why I’ve struggled to trust myself, trust my reactions to people. But with you, Anton, I think I’ve finally learned to trust myself. To trust you.”

  She reached her hand toward his and wrapped it around the ring he held. The hard facets of the stone were like the facts she ran her life by, that helped her anchor her emotions. “The engraving of the ring says you love me.”

  “Read it and see.”

  She held the ring up to the light and saw a plain script etched into the narrow band. I love you, Katie.

  “Can I kiss you now?” he said.

  “Wait. I haven’t apologized yet for being so…”

  “Prickly?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Unsure, I was going to say.”

  “I’m a professional agony aunt, Katie,” he said with a grin. “I know prickly when it’s running out of my house crying after waffles.”

  She pursed her lips. “Okay. I’m letting you win this one only because it’s true, I have been such an idiot.”

  He smiled. “I know.”

  She frowned at him. “You’re supposed to say no, you haven’t.”

  He pulled her closer, so their foreheads touched. “I never lie to the women I’m in love with.”

  “The women you’re—”

  It was hard to get out the rest of her question, because Anton’s mouth had found hers and she briefly forgot about questions and answers, and prickliness and love…all she could
do was feel.

  Later, much later, she circled back. “So,” she said. “About all these women you’re in love with…”

  He was sitting beside her on his terrace, his hand around hers where the ring he’d given her glinted in the morning sun. “What’s that thing you’re always telling me? You’re a one-plus-one-equals-two kinda girl?”

  “Um, yes?”

  He pointed at her. “One.”

  He pointed at himself. “Plus one. That’s my two, Katie, and I’m planning—hoping—on keeping us together forever. With dogs, of course. You okay with that?”

  She was so, so okay with that. She leaned her head into his shoulder and breathed him in. “So. Any chance of a waffle?”

  “I’m doing B this week. Would a banana fritter interest you at all?”

  So long as Anton was the one doing the frittering, she would be very, very interested.

  Epilogue

  Anton had wanted to write their own vows for the wedding, which was an idea Katie supported wholeheartedly…until it came time to write her own.

  Sure, he was a celebrity writer, with his new book, Ghost Quotient, filling up every bestseller shelf in the country. How hard was it for him to come up with some profound words?

  For her, writing vows was more difficult. She didn’t have a gift for wordplay or cleverness. But she did love Anton, and that had to be enough.

  She looked up at him from beneath the froth of veil Vee had insisted she wear and squeezed Anton’s hand for courage.

  “I, Katie Shields, promise to love you, Anton Price, always and forever. I promise to hold you close to me every night and laugh with you every day. I promise this to you with my whole heart.”

  Anton’s dark eyes had taken on a shinier luster with every word she spoke. The celebrant gave him a moment, then nodded.

  “I, Anton Price,” he said, and his voice was rough.

  She squeezed his hand. This was big, this vow stuff. But here they were, together, making them. She could hear sniffles from the vicinity immediately behind her and knew that Vee was feeling this as deeply as she was.