“I’m not planning on you eating all that. I plan to take your leftovers home so I can eat them tomorrow.”
Raw, icy wind blew through her, chilling her soul, freezing her heart.
She’d forgotten. In their college days, though she’d had more extra money than he had, Heath had always insisted on paying, and he always wanted her to order more than she could eat so he could have the leftovers.
He shrugged, sat back in his chair, and folded his arms over his chest. “Old habits die hard.”
Harder than your feelings for me, for sure. You let those go easily enough.
She couldn’t stand any more. “Since when have you become Chatty Cathy? Please, just stop talking to me. Can we just eat in silence?”
“I thought we came here to talk about the plans you’ve got for String.”
“Fine!” She pulled the folders out of her bag and tossed them on the table. “But can we talk about just this?”
And they did. They ate, and Hope outlined her plans for the classes and the yarn tasting. Surprisingly, after she explained that yarn tastings were common in the textile world and no one was actually going to eat yarn, Heath didn’t question her decisions.
“And I already have eleven people signed up for the classes.”
“Will they all show?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know and I don’t much care. They paid in advance and it’s non-refundable. We have to order the supplies.”
He swallowed the last of his pie and nodded. “Good job.”
“Thank you.” She busied herself with packing up her leftovers in the polystyrene container Billy Joe had brought her.
Heath picked up the check.
“I’m not going to try to pay for my food,” Hope said in an attempt to lighten the mood. “After all, you’re taking most of mine home and you make a lot more money than I do.”
He almost smiled. “And who would have ever figured that?”
So much for lightening the mood.
“We should go.” She rose and handed him the takeout box.
Just as they were leaving, they ran into Rafe Beauford and Abby Whitman. Ran into wasn’t far from the literal truth. Rafe and Abby were laughing, holding hands, and Rafe seemed to be closing in to kiss Abby when Hope and Heath stepped out of the door.
Rafe didn’t get his kiss, because when the pair saw Heath and Hope, they broke into delighted laughter the way annoyingly blissful people do.
The way she and Heath had at one time.
“Hope! I heard you were back in town.” Rafe hugged her. She couldn’t recall that he had ever hugged her before. Then he shook Heath’s hand and laughed some more. “Hope, have you met Abby, my fiancée?” He said fiancée like it was the best word ever invented. He hugged Abby closer to him.
“We met when Abby signed up for the knitting classes at String,” Hope said. “It’s good to see you again, Abby.”
Abby laughed, and though she had struck Hope as the reserved type before, she threw her arms around Hope like they were long-lost twins. If she didn’t know better, Hope would think these two were the fools of the century.
Not fools; just in love.
Looking slightly panicked, Heath backed out of the hug zone. “Game over?”
“No. Not yet,” Rafe said. He blushed a little. “We needed to run home for something, so we left early and came to get a table for everyone.”
“Why don’t you both come back in and join us?” Abby asked. “We would love that.”
“We would!” Rafe agreed enthusiastically.
Because people in this state of euphoria enthusiastically loved everything.
“No,” Heath and Hope said at the same time.
“Thank you,” Hope said. “I have some work to do.”
And they watched Rafe and Abby make a loud, happy exit.
“I bet I know what they went home for,” Hope said.
“Yeah.” Heath sounded grim. He was probably thinking about their night at her apartment and regretting it. “Come on.” He took her arm to lead her down the steps. It was the first time he’d touched her since that night.
Hope pulled her arm away as they made their way down the street. If she continued to let him touch her, she might kiss him, and that wouldn’t be productive—or sane.
“They certainly are happy,” she said.
“Yeah. Abby’s husband was my apprentice. Did you know that?”
Hope stopped in front of Eat Cake. “No.” She’d heard Abby’s husband had died in a spelunking accident. “I’m sorry. Were you friends?”
Heath seemed to consider the question. “Yes,” he said hesitantly. “But my apprentice first. You know how that goes.”
She didn’t, but why go into it? “Rafe’s a good guy. It’s good they’re happy.”
“So you’re not jealous?”
Oh, good cow. That again? “Heath, listen to me. I mean it. I was a kid when I had a crush on Rafe. We never even went out.”
“I guess you’re as good at getting over a guy as you are at banking. Maybe better.”
Do not rise to the bait. It’s not productive.
“Well, he and Abby are getting their happily ever after. And good for them.”
Heath looked at her, narrowed his eyes, and tilted his head to the side. “That would have been us.”
Enough. She’d had enough. He’d baited her all she was going to allow.
Chapter Nine
Heath knew immediately when he’d pushed Hope too far. She snatched the takeout food from him and threw it in a trashcan with both hands. Then she drew herself up like the queen of the mermaids rising from the sea.
“It would have been us, huh? If not for me? If I hadn’t broken up with you?”
He’d dealt with worse than mermaids, even royal ones, and he was going to stand his ground. “That’s right.”
“Really? That’s what you think?” She put her hand on the middle of his chest and shoved him toward the bench in front of the bakery. “Sit your ass down. I’ve got some things to say to you.”
Oh, hell no. He was not going to participate in a scene in the middle of town. “I don’t think so.” He started to walk away, but she seemed to grow three feet.
“I said sit!”
And for some reason, he did. She loomed over him, flailing her arms like a giant bird about to take flight.
“Now, you listen here, Heath Beckett. You’ve been making snide remarks ever since I hit town, and I’ve listened to it all without defending myself.”
“You have no defense.”
“That’s what I thought, but I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to have my say, and you’re going listen.”
She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. If only she weren’t so damned beautiful. When she opened her eyes again, she seemed calmer, though he doubted if she really was.
“First off, I’m sorry. I have wished an hundred million times that I had not left you. I was kid. If it’s possible, I was even more rigid then than I am now. We had a plan and you blindsided me. I should have believed in you or at least believed that you should take a chance. But in my defense, quitting school with a grade point average like you had, that close to graduation, bordered on crazy.”
His academic advisor had said as much, and he’d received countless phone calls from his professors, high school teachers, and family. Truth be told, his parents still weren’t over it. But he had expected more from Hope.
“But still, if I had it do over again, I would do differently.”
“Hindsight, Hope. It’s easy to say all that now that I’m successful. I’m sure you mean it now.”
“I meant it then. It took a little while for the cobwebs to clear, but I regretted what I did long before you became successful.”
“That’s not true. If you had been sorry, you’d have come back to me.” He hesitated, reluctant to let his next thought tumble out of his mouth. But what the hell difference did it make now? “And I would have taken you back.”
She shook her head and her mouth crumpled. “Heath, I did come back to you. When I finally got my head straight, I drove to Ashville. It was only six weeks after we broke up. Six weeks! And the girl in the coffee shop told me you’d just gotten married.”
The universe spun and flew apart a hundred times. He wanted to deny that it could be true, call her a liar, but that would only be denial. Hope didn’t even know how to lie. She had come back for him. She had been sorry. She had still wanted him, even before he finished the angel panels.
“You may never believe this,” she went on, “but my mind was made up. I had a new plan. I was going to forgo grad school, get a job, and help you any way I could, no matter what it took. But I went into the coffee shop that day, and the barista told me you’d married Aimee.”
He did believe her. That was the hell of it. Finding the right words was hard even under the best of circumstances. He’d lived so long with blaming her and only her that he cast about for a way to perpetuate that.
“And you just drove away?” He could see her doing it, and it made him sick.
She spread her arms wide. “What would you have had me do? Go buy one of Aimee’s china plates, knock on the door, and offer my good wishes?”
She had a point. But there were things she needed to know, too. “Aimee didn’t have any china plates.” There hadn’t been time. “She died, you know.”
Hope’s shoulders slumped a bit. “I do know. And I’m sorry. Aimee was a sweet girl. But all that is a separate issue. You act like this was all my fault. You are the one who got married when I was still crying myself to sleep because I missed you so much.”
Heath had never been good at relationships, had never succeeded on any level until Hope. And even after all that had happened, he’d never thought of what they’d had as a failure. Heartbreak, yes, but not a failure. For the first time, he considered how it must have looked to Hope when he got married so soon. True, he didn’t know she’d come looking for him, but he should have considered that she might have heard. He would have assumed she would think he did it on the rebound or for spite. Neither thing was true, but it was close enough.
“I’m sure Aimee supported what you wanted to do. I can see why that made you love her so much that you wanted to marry her quickly,” Hope said in the smallest, most heartbroken voice he’d ever heard.
“It isn’t a separate issue. And I never loved her at all. Not like that. There was no time. Aimee was dying when I married her. I never even slept with her. She was too sick.”
Hope stood statue still. When she was able to move again, she put her hands on her head and dropped to the bench beside him.
“My God, Heath. I don’t even know what to say.”
In for a penny. “See, Aimee had a crush on me. That’s all. She was a kid. But her leukemia was very aggressive, and she was never going to live long enough to know it was just a crush. Foster asked me to do it. Aimee wanted to stand up in church, wear a wedding dress, and marry me. That’s all she wanted. I’d lost you. I knew I’d never love anyone else. So I figured, why not?”
The streets were beginning to fill with high-spirited people on their way to The Café Down On The Corner. The Broncos must have won.
Finally, Hope spoke again. “And you had to go through all that? It had to be—”
“Awful?” A breeze blew his hair in his eyes, and he pushed it back. “Yeah. Not as bad as being without you, but bad. I was making angels and counting out pain pills. Later, Foster said I really stepped up. But I don’t know.”
“I can’t do this!” Hope choked out the words around tears. Great. Now he’d made her cry. He never knew how to deal with tears—but it turned out not to be a problem.
She jumped up, took off her high heel shoes, and ran, ran for all she was worth, without looking back.
And he let her go—just like he’d let her go before, because he was bad at seeing what was coming, worthless when it came to finding the words to stop it.
“That wasn’t good.”
Heath looked up to see Jimpson standing over him.
Damn it all to hell! “Were you spying on me?” Heath demanded.
“Some might call it spying.” Jimpson sat down beside him on the bench. “Some might call it headed to The Café Down On The Corner after the ballgame and laying low to keep from interrupting.”
Heath didn’t say anything.
“The Broncos won,” Jimpson said.
“That’s good.” That was the socially correct thing to say.
“Do you want to know by how much?”
“No.” He’d spent every bit of energy he could in the name of social correctness on the last response.
“What do you want?” Jimpson asked. “Besides Hope?”
“What makes you think I want Hope?”
“Do you deny it?”
“No, but it doesn’t matter what I want. I would also like to be intuitive and eloquent, but I’m not.”
“No,” Jimpson agreed. “You’re never going to be. But I don’t think Hope cares about those things. She loves you anyway.”
That was good to hear. It warmed his heart, even if it wasn’t true.
“Do you want to know how I know?” Jimpson asked.
“No. Not unless she told you directly.”
“She didn’t have to. A woman who runs away from you barefoot and crying because she caused you pain loves you.”
“Even if that were true, it’s not enough. She’ll leave and go back to Charlotte.”
“Did you tell her you love her? Did you ask her to stay?”
“No.”
“Did you when she left you before?”
“She knew.”
“Did she?” Jimpson asked.
“Of course.”
“Just because you have next to no perception, you assume others are a hundred percent correct at reading people.”
“I don’t think that. I don’t think it of you.”
“And that’s another mistake. I have lots of time to ponder the human condition while I buff floors. And I buff a lot of floors.” He stood up. “Here comes Coach MacKenzie and Miss Vanessa.”
Great. More MacKenzies. Just what I need.
“Jimpson. Heath.” Hope’s uncle shook their hands.
“Hello, Jimpson,” Miss Vanessa said. “And Heath. Why don’t you come join us?”
First Rafe and Abby. Now the coach and his wife. Everybody wanted him to “join them” except Hope.
As the three of them walked away, Jimpson said over his shoulder, “Remember what I said, Heath. If it won’t sink in go buff some floors.”
Chapter Ten
Hope had hurt over Heath for ten years, but that was nothing compared to hurting for him.
She could barely fathom it. He’d been a groom at twenty-one and a widower at twenty-two, while others his age were taking one last trip to the beach before real adulthood set in. She could imagine him sitting by Aimee’s bed, taking her to doctors’ appointments, and trying to find a way to console her when he didn’t have the tools to do it.
He’d never had the tools, never known the right thing to say or do when the unexpected happened. Sometimes he said all the wrong things, and, sometimes, nothing at all. But it hadn’t mattered to Hope. His love had been so complete and given so freely that it was the very definition of comfort. And back then, she’d taken it for granted, had thought all love was like that. She’d even imagined Aimee basking in that love.
She knew better now. She and Heath had had something rare and beyond special. And not only had she thrown it and him away, she’d pushed him into purgatory. On top to the day-to-day horror of witnessing her devastating illness, Heath had been fond of Aimee, so there had surely been grief. There would have also been guilt over not being able to love her back and, later, accepting condolences from people who thought he’d buried the love of his life.
She remembered now reading one of the first articles about him after the Milton building was finished. The aut
hor said it must not be true that only those who had suffered deeply could become great artists, because Heath Beckett was a great artist and was too young to have suffered very much.
Clearly, the reporter hadn’t done his homework. Later, the sad story made great press. Heath had probably felt guilty about that, too.
Hope rose from the sofa where she had collapsed after her desperate escape to her apartment. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting there, but she couldn’t endure the clothes she was wearing for another minute. She stuffed the Armani jacket and skirt into a garbage bag, along with the silk blouse that was meant to slightly soften the severe look. She bought a new “work uniform” every season, and she didn’t care if this was her newest one. Then, on impulse, she added her underwear and Christian Louboutin pumps.
Even now, her practical nature would not allow her to throw the clothes in the trash, but some savvy thrift store shopper would have a very lucky day. One thing was for sure, Hope never wanted to see these clothes again, never wanted to remember what she’d learned and felt when she’d been wearing them.
She had just pulled on yoga pants and a sweatshirt when the downstairs bell rang. She was in no mood for company, but it was likely her mother on her way home from the hospital.
Though she’d planned to go after meeting with Heath, Hope had not visited her father today. She probably had a scolding coming over that. If Hope didn’t answer the door, her mother would just call.
She made her way down the stairs. For certain, it wouldn’t be Heath. There was nothing to say, and even if there were, he wouldn’t know what it was.
But when she opened the door, there he stood. Her heart hadn’t gotten the message from her brain that she had screwed this up beyond redemption, because it gave a little joyful leap.
“You should check who’s there before opening the door this time of night.”
“I thought you were my mother.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I might install a peephole in this door for you. Unless you’re leaving.”
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