by Nina Lane
Dean is soaked through, his hair plastered to his head, rain dripping in rivulets over his face. He stops at the bottom of the terrace steps. For a long moment, we look at each other, the rain falling between us, a rumble of thunder echoing over the mountains.
He climbs the steps to where I’m standing, and as he closes the distance between us, the ache inside me softens and disappears. Dean twists a lock of my damp hair between his fingers and tucks it behind my ear.
“Hey, beauty.” His voice is a warm, gentle current sliding right around my heart.
“Hi, professor.” I reach out to put my hand on his chest. “You came back.”
“I will always come back to you.”
Fresh tears sting my eyes. Uncaring that he’s drenched, I move closer and slide my arms around his waist. He folds his arms around me. Rainwater seeps from his clothes into my T-shirt, but the sensation of his powerful body against mine, and the delicious, familiar warmth of him, burns away the cold.
I feel my world straightening into balance again, a palpable shift beneath my feet, securing me to the earth, to myself, to this man.
Only when a chill ripples over my skin do I lift my head to look up at him.
“Nicholas is sleeping in the office, but there are extra clothes in the backroom. You should find something that fits you.”
Dean picks up my hand and presses a kiss to my palm before twining his fingers through mine. We go into the café and I pull on a dry shirt before checking on Nicholas again. Dean emerges from the backroom in sweatpants and a black Wonderland Café T-shirt. He sits at a stool on the counter as I pour him a cup of hot coffee and refresh my tea.
I set the coffee in front of him, gazing at the thickness of his eyelashes, the way his lips close around the rim of the mug.
“What happened?” I ask quietly.
“The Assembly voted to protect the site. There was a unanimous yes vote from all UN delegates.”
“Oh, Dean.” Pleasure and pride flood me in a wave as I lean across the counter to kiss him. “Congratulations. You must be thrilled.”
“Yeah, I’m happy about it.” A self-conscious smile tugs at his mouth. “Now we won’t have any trouble with funding or repairing the quake damage. Not to mention, we can keep the entire excavation team intact and work on finding out what else is there.”
I take his hands in mine and squeeze, unable to speak past the sudden lump in my throat. I forget, sometimes, how much I admire this part of Dean’s character—the relentless drive to pursue a goal, to get things done not only for himself, but for other people. For history.
“I gave the presentation on Tuesday, and they voted on Wednesday,” he continues. “Then I had the session on medieval sites all day Thursday and Friday. I figured if I hurried, I could get back here in time for at least part of the festival, so when the last session was over, I caught the next flight out. And here I am.”
Here you are. Right here. As always.
“I thought you were going to Altopascio after the assembly,” I say.
“I told Simon he’d have to go without me.” Dean shrugs and takes a sip of coffee. “He was heartbroken, of course.”
“Of course. But I’m sure he’ll get over it.”
“Yeah.” Dean sets the mug down and looks at me, his gaze tracking warmly over my face. “Sorry I couldn’t stop the storm for you.”
I smile. I suppose it’s about time I also accept the fact that not even my husband can prevent certain kinds of storms.
“I know you would have, if you could have,” I tell him.
Sometimes I wish there was a way to be prepared for everything. Then I remind myself that I was never prepared for the things that set me on the path of my life. And, like a string of pearls, everything is connected. The endless travels with my mother, all the strangers and friends we met along the way, the path to Twelve Oaks and North, then to my aunt Stella. Then Fieldbrook, North again, the University of Wisconsin. Dean. Our son.
“Did you talk to Hans and Simon about the job?” I ask.
“Yeah, we had a few meetings.” Dean rubs a hand through his hair, faint hesitation flashing across his expression before he says, “The World Heritage Center committee did formally offer me the assistant director position.”
A sense of inevitability crashes over me, but not in an unpleasant way. This news isn’t a surprise, but it’s been an uncertainty. And now, at least, knowing is better than not knowing.
I reach across the counter and put my hand on the side of Dean’s neck. The sensation of his heart beating strong and steady against my palm is beautifully reassuring, one of the few things—it seems—that hasn’t changed.
“Dean.” Saying his name, too, eases my apprehension. It still tastes smooth and richly sweet, like cherry brandy or butter pecan. “Congratulations. I knew they’d offer you the job. They courted you so hard because they wanted you so badly.”
A smile tugs at his mouth. “Like the way I did with you, huh?”
I return his smile. “But I didn’t turn you down.”
“You didn’t say yes right away either.”
Silence fills the air between us. My heart thumps.
“So what did you say to the WHC?” I ask.
“I said thank you,” Dean replies. “But that I couldn’t leave King’s or Mirror Lake. They told me to look over the employment package and benefits before they accepted my answer. Hans is calling me next week.”
“Have you read the package yet?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty incredible. Even included an au pair option, if we want one for Nicholas. Rent, expenses, travel. Everything.”
I’m not sure what to say to that revelation, much less how to feel. I’ve spent the past few weeks knowing what an extraordinary opportunity this would be for Dean, yet fighting the very idea of changing our lives so drastically.
What about him?
I look at him, the shadows carving over his face, his thick eyelashes and dark eyes I’ve lost myself in more times than I can count.
I wonder about the numbers of us—how many times we’ve kissed, how many times I’ve pressed my hand against his chest, how many times Dean has touched my face or tugged gently at a lock of my hair. How many times he’s called me beauty.
“Do you know one of the things I loved about you from the start?” I ask. “One of the things I still love most about you?”
“The professor thing.”
“Well, that too,” I admit. “But I also love how you want to know everything. How curious you are… not just about history, but about people, places, and things. And you don’t need to travel the world to learn. You were like that before we got married. You read books about religion, art, and politics, you wanted to go to museums and gardens.
“When we were living in Madison, you got involved with the Wisconsin River conservation, and when we were in LA, we ended up in the weirdest places. That mosaic tile house in Venice. The original Bob’s Big Boy. The velvet painting museum. No matter where we were, you found something fascinating to learn about.”
Dean keeps watching me, his eyes almost glittering.
“I remember one weekend in Madison when we were hanging out in your apartment,” I continue. “You were reading a book about the history of cryptography. You were telling me about it, and I totally wasn’t getting the point, so you sat down and taught me some nineteenth-century code. Then you wrote me a note in the code and told me to decipher it while you went to make dinner.”
“What did I write?”
“You wrote…” My heart gives a happy little knock of reminiscence. “Come here, beauty. I need to kiss you.”
He smiles, his eyes creasing at the corners. “And did you obey?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember.” His voice deepens. He crooks his finger at me. “Come here, beauty. I need to kiss you.”
I go around the counter to where he’s sitting. He grips my waist and pulls me into the V of his legs, bringing one hand up
to the nape of my neck. With intense pleasure and relief, I let myself fall into the warm pressure of his mouth, edged with the crystalline memory of our past.
“I’ve always sought knowledge,” Dean says, lifting his head. “That’s why I was so into the King Arthur stories when I was a kid—I wanted to know more about the knights, the Crusades, the castles. I guess that expanded into other areas as I got older. But of all there is to learn in the world, there’s only one subject I’ve ever wanted to know everything about.”
I wait, my heart pounding, my gaze locked on his. His expression is warm and tender, a look reserved only for me.
“You, of course,” he says. “You’re the book I want to open. The story I want to read. The lesson I want to learn, the music I want to hear, the painting I want to study for eternity. If I know nothing else in life except the truth and heart of Olivia West, I’m the luckiest man alive.”
“Well, that’s just great,” I mutter, pressing my face against his shoulder. “Now I’m crying.”
A chuckle rumbles through his chest as he spreads his hand over the side of my neck and presses his lips to my forehead.
“I love you, Liv. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
“I’ve always been happy with you.”
So why have I been so knotted up at the idea of us ever leaving Mirror Lake?
Dean and I lived in a few other cities before we settled in Mirror Lake. Even though they were unknown to me, I was happy to be wherever we needed to be.
Granted, we didn’t have children then, and I didn’t own a café or have a strong circle of friends and community, but the idea of change wasn’t that scary since I knew I’d always have my husband. And now the two of us have our son.
I take his hand and rub it slowly between my palms. “You know my Pinterest boards?”
“Your what?”
“Pinterest boards. It’s that site where you make these bulletin boards with different themes. Crafts, recipes, books, fashion, whatever. I have about a dozen of them. One with sexy pictures, but the rest are recipes and stuff about motherhood and raising children.”
“What’s the point of them?”
“Inspiration. Planning. Ideas. Ever since Nicholas was born, I’ve had all these intentions of making homemade baby food and gourmet dinners. I have a board of pictures from other cafés and bistros that I thought we could adapt for Wonderland. I was going to spend weekends with Nicholas making sponge towers and spaghetti paintings and walnut-shell boats…”
My voice trails off. An image of Nicholas and I snuggled under a blanket in the living room appears in my head.
“But do you know what, Dean?” I pull myself onto the stool beside him and rest my elbows on the counter. “We haven’t yet made spaghetti paintings or walnut-shell boats. And I don’t know when we will.”
“Ah, well.” Dean tightens his arm around me. “Sounds like a waste of good food anyway.”
“I just wanted everything to be perfect, you know? I wanted Nicholas to have all the things I never did. I wanted the café to be this warm, fuzzy place where parents and children can be transported to the land of make-believe. I wanted feather-light lemon cakes and rainbow parfaits. I wanted the festival to be fun and heart-warming, where we all joined together as a community. I wanted you and me to have our hot, explosive sex life back. But not only did everything turn out so not perfect, I somehow managed to screw it all up.”
I shake my head. “But I think I might have realized that as imperfect as it is, everything is the way I wanted it to be, just not exactly how I envisioned. And what kind of an ass would I be to complain about anything when I have all this?”
I wave my hand in a gesture that encompasses Dean and me, Nicholas, the café, our friends, and all the rest of Mirror Lake.
Dean slides his hand over my back, rubbing the ridges of my spine.
“A very sexy ass,” he remarks, moving his hand down to pat my rear end. “And it’s okay, Liv. You don’t need to feel guilty for wanting things to be perfect. You don’t need to feel guilty at all. I get where it comes from.”
“I guess I totally overcompensated.”
“Yeah, you did. I get that too.”
I turn to look at him. It’s the same reason he spent his life working so hard to be the perfect son—to compensate for the dysfunction of his family and his own guilt over ruining his relationship with Archer.
I straighten, cupping my hand around the back of his neck. A drop of water runs from his damp hair over my fingers.
Our marriage is everything.
“I love you, Dean. And I don’t want you to have any regrets.”
“As long as I have you, I never will,” he says. “I wouldn’t change what we have for the world.”
“But maybe we should change it for the world,” I reply. “You were always meant for more, Dean. I know you love working at King’s, but I also know there’s a reason you’ve been doing so much internationally over the past few years. And I know this position with the World Heritage Center has sparked something inside you. All those dreams of crusades and adventures you had when you were a boy… well, maybe this is your chance to make them come true.”
“Ah, Liv.” He shakes his head. “I don’t need the job.”
“You don’t need it, but you might want it.”
A sudden gust of wind bangs the screen on the front door. Dean and I both climb off our stools but instead of closing the door, we walk out to the covered front porch and sit on the white porch swing, which is sheltered near the building.
“Moving to Paris isn’t like going to the moon,” I remark, even though it’s certainly felt that way to me.
Damp air brushes against my face. Beside me, Dean is a solid wall of security and strength. He settles his hand on my thigh.
“Paris is one thing, Liv. But already neither of us likes the fact that I have to travel so much. I’d have to travel even more as the assistant director. And you coming along to Malaysia or Cambodia with a toddler… no.”
Allie’s voice echoes in my head.
“People move all over the world with young children all the time,” I say.
“We’re not people. We’re us.”
Silence falls, broken only by the sound of rain pattering on the porch roof. The streetlights along Emerald Street create golden circles glowing wetly on the sidewalks. The town is alive around us—the lake rippling in the wind, the metallic-gray storm clouds gathered overhead, the windows of downtown shops blazing with light.
I once couldn’t imagine leaving Mirror Lake. But now, knowing the world wants and needs my brilliant husband, knowing I’m strong enough to share him, that he will always walk a path that leads straight back to me… now I’m starting to believe I can find a home anywhere.
“Do you remember I once told you about Dorothy discovering she always had the power to leave Oz?” I say. “She’d been wearing the ruby slippers the whole time.”
“I remember.”
“I’ve done that a lot too,” I admit. “I’ve spent all this time looking for something I already have.”
“Ruby slippers?”
“No, professor.” I lean my head against his shoulder and close my eyes, breathing in the scents of rain and Dean and our future. “Perfection.”
“You had it all along?”
“Of course.” I rub my cheek against his shoulder. “It’s you. You’re my perfection.”
“Ah.” He pats my hip, his voice warm with tenderness. “Good one, beauty.”
I smile, snuggling closer to him. We sit together for a long time, as the rain begins to lessen and the clouds slide away from the sky, revealing a sprinkle of stars and a perfect, spiral moon that will follow us wherever we go or wherever we stay.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‡
DEAN
Archer’s motorcycle is parked outside the railroad depot. The doors to the train shed are open, work lights glowing from inside, a radio playing the Stones’ “All Down the Line.”
Archer is crouched by the side of the engine, working something with a wrench.
“Hey.” I stop near him, shoving my hands into my pockets.
“Hey.” He glances at my suit. “Guess you’re not here to work.”
“No. You got a minute?”
He nods and pushes to his feet. I sit on the steps of a cargo car, while Archer reaches into a nearby cooler and produces two cartons of chocolate milk. He offers me one. I take it, remembering how chocolate milk was a staple in our Castle tree house. Archer has never lost his love for it.
He sits beside me. I take a drink of the sugary milk, admitting it tastes pretty good. I set the carton down and rest my elbows on my knees, linking my hands together.
“You know that job I told you about?” I ask.
“The fancy European thing.” Archer tilts his head back to take a drink. “Yeah.”
“When I was in Geneva,” I say, “they offered me the job.”
Archer is silent for a minute before he says, “So what did you tell them?”
“They want an answer next week. I have to turn them down.”
“You have to,” Archer repeats, looking at the engine on the opposite side of the shed. “That’s different from you want to.”
Silence falls. I don’t contradict him because he’s right.
“When I was a kid, I dreamed of something like this,” I admit. “Traveling the world. Going to unknown places, having adventures. But when I met Liv, I thought she was all the adventure I’d ever need.”
“Now you think differently?”
“No, that’s not it. I could live in a cave with her and be happy. It’s more that… she had a shitty childhood and hated moving from place to place, being dragged around by her mother. She’s never seen the appeal of traveling, seeing new things, meeting new people. So part of me wants her to know what that’s like, and to have more adventures with her. With Nicholas. I’ve always wanted to give them everything, including the world.”
“But?” Archer asks.
“But not like this,” I say. “If I took this job, I’d have to be away from them more than I already am. And Liv and I have both been spending too much time at work for too long. Something has to give for both of us. So I need to step down as project director of the train restoration.”