That Chesapeake Summer (Chesapeake Diaries Book 9)

by Mariah Stewart

  Now that she knew, what was she going to do about it?

  She finished her coffee and went back inside and made busy work for herself. She tossed out some items from the fridge that were past their prime. She emptied the dishwasher. She got her suitcase out of the car and put away her things, lingering on the white sundress with the red cherries that she’d bought at Bling. She remembered how Dan had tried not to look at her when she came out of the dressing room. His eyes had taken in every inch of her, and she’d known that even if she hadn’t loved the dress the minute she saw it, she’d have bought it just because of the way he’d made her feel. Had anyone ever looked at her that way before?

  Certainly not Thomas, the lawyer from Chicago who’d proposed to her with a ring the size of Lake Michigan and who’d charmed her mother. Lainey had been incredulous when Jamie told her she’d given the ring back when she discovered he’d do anything—anything at all, no limits—to win a case. Or Cal, who taught physics at the university and who, she’d found after one too many dates, lacked a true sense of humor. Peter—like Cal, a professor at Princeton—enjoyed accompanying her to book signings and had the annoying habit of introducing her to his friends as J.L. And then there was Jason, whom she almost married. Jason, who could never seem to let her work without interruption, even when she was closing in on a deadline or when she was so in the zone that she forgot to eat. His constant need for her attention drove her insane and interfered with her work, and that was the end of that.

  If any of them had looked at her the way Dan had, or if one had his heart, she might not be here alone, in the house overlooking the lake, on a beautiful and peaceful summer evening.

  But here she was, and here she would stay until she could find the way to answer her own question: Now that she knew her birth mother’s identity, what was she going to do about it?

  In the meantime, there was a book to be written, one that would be different from her past efforts. Exploring the nature of truth—and lies—had been Grace’s idea, but it was Jamie’s to run with. As a theme, it intrigued her, and she’d been playing around with different openings for the last couple of days.

  AFTER FOUR DAYS of almost round-the-clock work—interrupted only to check the mail and talk to Sis on the phone—Jamie finally had a direction for her book and was in the middle of preparing a guide for moving forward. She’d made a cup of coffee that was now cold, and she was on her way into the kitchen to make another when the doorbell rang. Frowning at the intrusion and tempted not to answer, she peeked out a front window, and her heart all but stopped in her chest.

  “It figures,” she grumbled, looking down at the boxer shorts and T-shirt she’d slept in the night before and under which she wore nothing. “No time to change now.” She opened the door, smiled a greeting, and tried to pretend she didn’t look as if she’d just rolled out of bed.

  “Are you going to invite me in?” Dan stood on the second step from the top, one hand on the porch rail.

  She stood aside and gestured for him to enter. After she closed the door behind him, she said, “This is really a surprise. And wow, you’re three hours from the inn. Have you suffered a head injury?”

  “I thought about calling, but I was afraid you’d have an excuse for me not to come.” He ignored the jab. “Like you were going out of town or had company or something.”

  “No company, no plans to leave home, but yes, I might have come up with something.”

  “I didn’t want to take that chance.” He sighed. “Jamie, we have to talk.”

  “Okay.” She went into the kitchen and he followed. “Coffee? Iced tea? Beer?”

  “Coffee is good. As you noted, it was a three-hour drive, and I left pretty early.”

  He sat at the table while she made coffee and small talk. She brought two mugs to the table and sat opposite him.

  “So what did you drive all this way to talk about?” she asked. “You could have called.”

  “Some conversations need to be face-to-face.”

  “All right,” she said warily. “We’re face-to-face. You want to know why I left without telling you.”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  “I just need you to listen and not talk, because I practiced this all the way from Maryland, and I don’t want to mess up what I have to say.”

  “Okay.”

  Dan took a deep breath. “Maybe this is going to sound strange to you, but when I saw you walk into the lobby that first day, I knew you were going to be someone special to me. That you were going to matter to me. I’m not saying love at first sight—which I never believed in—but it was like a light went on inside me. I tried to pretend otherwise, but I knew. I didn’t want it to be true, but I knew.” Jamie opened her mouth to say something, but he held up a hand to stop her. “Save it till I’m finished, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “That first time we met, I knew I was going to care about you.”

  “Even after I mistook you for a bellhop and tipped you?”

  Dan smiled and took his wallet from his pocket and pulled out a folded five-dollar bill. “I still have it.”

  That he’d saved that bill touched her, and she took a sip of coffee to have something to do with her mouth besides speak when he’d asked her to listen.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “I was really conflicted. I found myself wanting to spend more and more time with you. I wanted to see where this could go, you and I, even though it scared me to react so strongly to someone I didn’t know. I wasn’t looking for someone, you understand? I’d had someone, and that hadn’t ended very well. I was okay thinking I’d spend the rest of my life alone. I didn’t want to set myself up to feel that kind of loss ever again.

  “Then you came along . . .” He’d taken her hand without her realizing that he held it. “After you left, I thought I’d be okay waiting till you came back, but I wasn’t. I thought I could give you time to figure out whatever it was that had made you run, but after a couple of days, I couldn’t.

  “Here’s the thing. I’m aware, maybe more than most people, that life doesn’t come with guarantees. Things can happen that change everything in the blink of an eye. You always think there’s plenty of time, but I know for a fact that there’s never enough. I don’t want to wait around to see if you’ll come back to St. Dennis. I need to ask you to come back now, because what I feel for you is very real. I think you were starting to feel the same way about me.”

  Jamie nodded.

  “I don’t want to look back on this time and regret the things we didn’t do. I want to look back and see the beginning of something that changed both our lives. I want to look back and see the beginning of something that lasts—and I don’t want to waste any time we might have together, because there’s no way of knowing how long that time might be.”

  His voice was so sincere, the look in his eyes so naked and honest, that Jamie tried to look away, but she could not break their gaze.

  “All those little hints you dropped about me not being able to let someone else take responsibility for the inn—no matter how much I denied it, you were right. I have been hovering over that place like the parent of a newborn, and you’d think I would have learned my lesson.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The day she died, before she took the boat out, Doreen, my wife, told me that she was leaving us. All of us. Me, the kids . . .” He swallowed hard. “She said she just couldn’t be an innkeeper’s wife any longer. She’d grown up in California, and in her heart, she was still a California girl.”

  “Wait . . . she wasn’t planning on taking the kids?”

  Dan shook his head. “She said they could visit in the summer, but they loved everything about their lives—their school, their friends, the inn—and she wasn’t going to uproot them.”

  “Surely you’d noticed somethi
ng wasn’t right between you before that.”

  “I’m embarrassed to say I did not. As a matter of fact, we were going to take the boat out so we could finish the conversation without the kids around, so they or anyone else couldn’t overhear. But something came up at the inn, and she got tired of waiting for me. I don’t remember now what the problem was, but at the time, it seemed so important. Too important to leave to someone else. She went out alone, and she didn’t come back.”

  “You think if you’d gone with her, she wouldn’t have drowned?”

  He nodded.

  “Was she experienced with the boat?”

  “It was her boat.”

  “I thought you said a storm had come up out of nowhere.”

  “It did.”

  “So how do you think you could have made it to shore when she couldn’t?”

  “I should have been with her.”

  “So you could have died with her? You think your kids would have been okay with that? Think they would have been better off with no parents instead of one?” When he didn’t respond, she said, “Look, I don’t know why things happen the way they do any more than you do. I think when things like that happen, we have a tendency to look within ourselves to place blame because we can’t blame anyone else. I understand why you feel responsible, but you aren’t. I understand wanting to shoulder the blame, but don’t. You weren’t responsible for your wife’s death, Dan. Maybe it’s time to stop beating yourself up over something you couldn’t control.”

  “For what it’s worth, I’ve trying to delegate more at the inn. It might not happen overnight, but I do want more of a life. I don’t want to make those mistakes again. I’d like you to be part of that life, so in the same way you’ve told me to let others share a little of the responsibilities for the inn, I’m telling you to let someone else share in whatever it is that’s on your mind. Whatever is bothering you, whatever made you leave, I want to help you work it out.”

  “It’s not that easy, Dan.”

  “Easy isn’t an issue. You leaving St. Dennis, that’s an issue.”

  She tried to find the words to tell him why she’d left, but she couldn’t. He reached out to her, drew her to him, and pulled her onto his lap. “Come back with me. Whatever it is, we’ll face it together.”

  She wanted to tell him that there was nothing he could do about her situation, but he kissed her, and what started as the softest, sweetest kiss ever deepened in a heartbeat to something much more. Her hands on either side of his face, she held on as if her life depended on it. A wave of heat flared up between them, and Jamie knew Dan was right. Whatever was between them could be life-changing. Was she willing to find out?

  Her lips parted and his tongue teased the corners of her mouth, tentatively at first. His hands ran the length of her back once, twice, three times, each time adding a little more heat to the fire. Those knowing hands slid under her shirt, seeking her breasts, his touch light but sure, and she pressed against him, wanting more. She sat back and raised her arms to pull off her shirt, and his mouth was on her breast before she had her top over her head. A hot jolt went straight to her core, and a soft gasp escaped her lips. “Dan,” she whispered.

  He looked up at her through eyes that had glazed over with want, and he lifted her and himself from the chair in one motion. “Which way?” he asked.

  Jamie pointed toward the foyer. “Upstairs. Second door on the right.”

  The shades were up, and sun poured in across the floor and the bed she’d neglected to make that morning. She shimmied out of her boxers and dropped them on the floor, watching Dan undress at what appeared to be the speed of light. He joined her on the bed and she wrapped her arms around his neck and closed her eyes, kissing him blindly, lost in a fog of want and need. His hands slid under her hips and raised them slightly as he entered her and began to move inside her, slowly at first, setting the tempo. She picked up the rhythm, instinct overriding everything else, while a soft sound emanated somewhere in the back of her throat, escaping her lips as the pace increased. She arched under him, crying out as the heat overtook them both and brought them to a pinnacle that slowly wound down, leaving them breathless.

  “Holy crap,” she whispered, unaware she’d spoken aloud, and Dan laughed.

  “At the very least.” He eased off her, resting on his side next to her, a hand on her hip.

  “I guess you didn’t mind that I hadn’t made the bed this morning.”

  “Like I noticed.” He looked beyond her, out the window. “Though I am noticing the view. It’s beautiful.”

  “Not quite the view of the Chesapeake that you have from the inn, but for central New Jersey, it’s pretty nice.” Now slightly self-conscious, she pulled an end of the sheet over her torso.

  “It’s a great view. I can see why you love it. How did you end up here?” he asked. “Do you have family in the area?”

  “No. Actually, I have very little family. Just my aunt Sis, and she lives in Pennsylvania.”

  “That’s it? No siblings, no cousins, no grandparents?”

  “None that I know of.”

  His brows knit together in concern. “That must be . . . That is, it’s hard to imagine not having family.”

  “You were going to say lonely, right? Sometimes it was. I always wanted to be part of a big family. You know, the kind that got together for everyone’s birthdays and all the holidays. When I was little, I made up a friend so I’d have someone to share things with. I used to set a place for her at the table, and I’d carry on conversations with her. At least I did until my parents made me stop. They were afraid I’d start to believe that she—Rosalia—was real.”

  “Did not talking to her make her less real?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She disappeared when I changed schools and made real friends. I was thinking about her not too long ago, when I was cleaning out some papers at my parents’ home. I drew pictures of her. It was funny to see how she changed when I did, clothes, hairstyles, that sort of thing. I remember when I was about thirteen, realizing I hadn’t thought about her in a long time and feeling guilty about it.”

  “The same way as if you dropped a real friend?” His fingers tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Like the same way you left and didn’t say goodbye?”

  “I’m sorry. I am. I just . . .” Jamie sighed. “I just had to get away from St. Dennis.”

  “This all has something to do with the conversation you had with Curtis Enright, doesn’t it.” He wasn’t asking.

  Jamie nodded.

  “I showed you mine,” he said, “time to show me yours.”

  Jamie got out of bed, the sheet still wrapped around her. “Let’s save that conversation for later. Right now I’m going to the shower. You can join me if you like.” She glanced at him over her shoulder as she headed toward the bathroom door.

  “If this is some cheap trick to seduce me into forgetting that it’s your turn to spill . . .” Dan sat up and watched her disappear through the open door, then followed. “Okay, so I’m weak. I can be had. But remember, this is only a temporary reprieve.”

  “DO YOU SPEND a lot of time out here?” Dan sat at the round table in the courtyard and gazed out at the lake. Together they’d made lunch—rare roast beef sandwiches and potato salad Jamie had picked up at the local deli the day before—and carried it outside to enjoy the shaded patio.

  “When I remember. Sometimes when I’m working, I forget to eat.”

  “I cannot imagine ever forgetting to eat.”

  “Our work is very different. You have certain things you need to do every day to keep your inn running smoothly, right?” When he nodded, she continued. “My work is concentrated in spurts. I can go for days writing notes to myself by hand or on the computer, but until it all starts to come together in my head, I don’t
work what most people would consider a full day. Once I have all the pieces lined up, I can start putting them together. Someone told me once that writing a novel was like that, too, but I’ve never tried to write fiction. I don’t know if I could.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a very different discipline. I don’t know that my mind works in what-ifs the way it has to in order to write a novel.”

  Dan pushed his plate back and rested his forearms on the table. “Fascinating,” he said, “but I think you’ve procrastinated long enough.”

  Jamie sighed. She’d known this moment was coming, and Dan was absolutely right. She’d been procrastinating since he arrived. “Let’s take our drinks down to the lake.” She stood, her wineglass in her hand.

  “Should I bring the bottle?” Dan asked.

  “I might need it.”

  Dan carried the wine along with his beer and followed Jamie across the lawn to the water’s edge, where two chairs sat looking out at the lake. Jamie sat in one and leaned back.

  “So?” Dan sat in the other chair and waited.

  “So I’m trying to figure out how to begin. I’ve only told one person about this, and she already knew most of it.”

  “Let me guess. My mother.”

  “How did you know? She didn’t tell you . . .”

  “Of course not. But not for lack of trying on my part. But come on. My mother knows everything about everyone, or so it seems.” He took a swig of beer and nodded to her. “So start at the beginning.”

  She did. She told him about her childhood, and how great it had been growing up in Caryville as Herb and Lainey’s daughter and only child. How her parents had always been there for her, had always made her feel loved and safe. How her father had died years ago and how close she and her mother had been. How she’d mourned the loss of her mother a few months ago, and how difficult it had been for her to clear out the house where she’d grown up.