He noted it, and pulled me closer. “Okay, let me ask again—are we okay?”
I chuckled at his powers of observation. “Sure,” I murmured. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
“I dunno,” he said, releasing me gently as we turned to face each other on the balcony. “It just seems like house hunting should be more fun than this.”
I chuckled. “You got that right,” I murmured, avoiding his eyes.
He sighed and turned, gripping the balcony railing with both hands. “I suppose we’ll know the right place when we see it, right?”
“You mean you will,” I huffed, mimicking his position as I gripped the railing by his side.
He turned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I turned back, as if suddenly too restless to stand in one position. “It means all we’ve done the last few days is look at places on the ocean, Kellan.”
His face was impassive, eyes blank, making both hard to read. “Yeah… and?”
“And,” I clucked, “I thought we agreed to check out some river view homes as well.”
“And… we did, Carla. Don’t you remember? For the first few days, that’s all we did.”
“For one day, that’s all we did!” I reminded him. “And since then, it’s been ocean, ocean, ocean…”
“That’s hardly how I remember it,” he huffed, pacing now as I followed him, as if trying to chase down a point. “All I remember is river, river, river—”
“Guys,” Spencer said, face surprised and vaguely disappointed. “Is everything… all right?”
“NO!” Kellan and I both shouted at the same time and, for once, we were in unanimous agreement.
Chapter 48
Kellan
The diner was bustling, the hour late, Spencer clearly surprised—and more than a little displeased—at being summoned after work hours. He wasn’t alone. I was salty and smelly from another long day out at sea, famished as Mavis brought me a BLT and chocolate milkshake, my idea of a big night out on the town lately.
“So what’s up?” he asked, clearly concerned.
“I’m just not happy with the way things are progressing,” I said, tired, frustrated and over it.
“What… things?”
I waved a greasy hand while reaching for my shake. “Our thing,” I grunted before sucking down a mouthful of homemade chocolate shake. “This… thing.”
His face remained impassive, but Spencer wasn’t a stupid man. And, I’d suddenly realized, neither was I. After a long week of seeing places that weren’t quite right, for either of us, I’d come to the determination that there was only one solution, whether Spencer liked it or not.
“That sounds like a threat,” he said, pushing his blue plate special away.
I chuckled dryly. “Not at all,” I reasoned. “It’s business, right? Your listings suck, you’re not listening to us, we’re frustrated and fighting, it’s just not working out.”
“B-b-b-but…” he stammered, losing his cool for the first time since we’d started working together. “We have a contract.”
“For a month,” I reminded him, having already consulted it on my way over from the marina.
“And we’ve only worked together for a week or so,” he said. “At least give me the rest of the term to make you happy.”
“You can keep looking for houses,” I said around a mouthful of crispy bacon and even crispier lettuce, “and if you find one, great. But I’m going to start looking for things myself and, well, if I find something…”
I left the obvious implication unspoken—Spencer would be shit out of luck when it came time to collect a commission. He nodded, knowing he didn’t have a leg to stand on. “And your South Beach condos?” he hedged, a wary look in his eyes, as if I might yank those out from under him as well. “I already have a lead on your place, and Carla’s tenant moves in next month. I assume you’re happy with both of those developments?”
I nodded emphatically, not wanting to burn a bridge where I didn’t have to. “Of course, Spencer. And, nothing personal, but like you said… both Carla and I are really fragile at the moment. We may have jumped the gun when it comes to moving in with each other.”
Spencer nodded, then seemed to reconsider, shaking his head instead. “I wouldn’t say that,” he countered. “I just think you two kids are overwhelmed with life at the moment. Give it some time, take it slow and look around. I’m sure you’ll find the place you want and, if you don’t mind, I’d like to keep looking whether you guys go with one of my choices or not, fair enough?”
I nodded, pushing my empty plate away and sitting back, surprised. “I appreciate that, Spencer,” I said, suddenly relieved. Ever since deciding to fire our realtor early that morning, I’d been dreading the decision. But now that it was done, and Spencer had taken it so well, relief flooded my body. Or maybe it was the chocolate shake. Whatever it was…I felt a lot better.
“Can I ask a question?” he said, reaching for his wallet. I waved it away and, apparently thinking twice, he nodded as if that was only right. “Did Carla make you come alone?”
I shook my head, trying to hide my blush. “I haven’t… haven’t told her yet.”
He nodded, a knowing smile curling across his fleshy face. “And if she calls me later this week to wonder why I haven’t been showing you two any new places?”
I shrugged. “You can tell her to ask me,” I said, voice heavy, if not quite with despair, then at least frustration. “But between you and I, Spencer, I think Carla is as over all this as I am.”
“I think you’re wrong,” he said, beginning to extricate himself from the booth. “I think if you two could step back from what you’re doing for everyone else, you’d discover why you wanted to buy a place together in the first place.”
I nodded, watching him stand to his full height. “You’re probably right, Spencer,” I said, feeling bad that I could potentially be cutting him out of his commission. “I just… don’t know how to do that right now.”
“You’re going to have to,” he said, voice firm, if not stern. “What’s the point of buying a place together if you’re so busy caring for everyone else you can’t even enjoy it?”
I pondered his words the whole way back to the beach cottage, nestled down a long, snaking drive amidst towering palms. The cottage was quaint from the outside, and just as cozy inside, but without the slapping of Carla’s bare feet on the hardwood floors or even the scent of her fragrant perfume, it seemed empty and cold.
Alone, the TV off and the house dark, I heard the crashing of the waves and wondered why I was being so stubborn. Was where we lived really more important to me than what Carla wanted? Did we even care where we lived if we were only going to be in Siesta Key for a few more years?
Or was it more than that? Was she mad about where we were looking for houses because she resented her parents? Or was it me? Was I missing something? Was I offending her by implying we’d “only” be in Siesta Key for a few years? Did she want more from me? Was this all some test and, worst of all, was I failing?
I wanted to call her, to text her, to run to her, to find her hiding in my bedroom, naked under the sheets, or even fully clothed in my kitchen. Instead I padded around the lonely cottage alone, pondering my fate and wondering how something that had started out so special turned so wrong, so fast.
Chapter 49
Carla
I paced the floor of my tiny room, the distant night sounds were calm and quiet at this hour. From the sunroom down the hall, Roy snored fitfully, sitting up in his medical bed after another long day of intense physical therapy. Mom was in her room, alone in her big king size bed, I assumed she was sleeping but, who knows? She could be up in the middle of the night, pacing like I was.
We each had our own private worries in this house, I suddenly realized, and though mine paled in significance to Roy’s or even my mother’s, did I not deserve to worry as well?
I chided myself, shaking my head at my self-indulgence. This was
n’t me at all. And it wasn’t Kellan, either. We’d been through so much together, he and I, to wind up in this place—empty, dark and alone. If only one of us would reach out and text the other, call the other, hell, even visit the other, I was sure we could clear everything up.
Instead we waited, filled with stubborn pride, neither reaching out to the other in days. Ever since we’d both stormed out of the last oceanfront condo Spencer had shown us, both men had been radio silent. I’d been tempted to call one or the other about a hundred times a day, but instead I’d played the same game, none too eager to be the one to make the first call.
Now look at me—tired and twisted, pacing back and forth in my tiny room, praying for sleep but knowing it wouldn’t come. I gave up, just before dawn, and dressed for the day. Simply, as I always did, in jeans and a T-shirt, socks and sneakers, for whatever the day might bring me.
It would be the usual, as per habit. I’d get Roy washed and bathed just after nine, feed him by ten, our appointment at his physical therapist’s by eleven. Then lunch—an ordeal in itself—by noon—doctor’s appointment at two, we’d stroll through the park at four, have dinner by six then a ton of pills before I set Roy and Mom up in the sun room, watching their favorite old movies until Roy fell asleep an hour or so later.
It was like so many days, one after the other, and while it was no picnic for Roy and Mom, I’d begun to fray at the corners of my life…with my patience, with sleep, with Kellan and Spencer, with my very sanity.
I rolled my eyes at my own dramatics, but it didn’t make my heart beat any slower or my blood pressure lower as I crept out of my bedroom, down the silent hall and toward the kitchen. It was too easy to wake Roy, whose hospital bed was just around the corner from the kitchen, with the slightest sound. So instead of making coffee for myself, I’d started stocking up on chocolate bars, grabbing one I’d laid out the night before from the kitchen table.
Backtracking, I let myself out the door at the other end of the hall, creeping silently down three steps before my shoes hit sand and I could finally relax. Free of the house where I’d spent so much time lately, free of the burdens that defined my day, I felt like the title of that famous movie and could finally… exhale.
I paused near the crooked palm tree at the end of our property line, tugging at the foil wrapper of my candy bar and inhaling the first bite with all the dark chocolate indulgence I could muster.
It filled my mouth with sugar, cocoa and caffeine, a taste explosion I wasn’t sure I could replace if Kellan and I ever did get our own place and I could make coffee freely again, without the fear of waking Roy and starting my day of service two hours early.
It wasn’t that I resented what I was doing for my family, that they needed it or weren’t able to do it for themselves. I was here, committed and happy to do it. It was just the relentless grind, the frantic pace and mind-numbing boredom of it all. Compared to South Beach, I might as well have been in a retirement home and, what’s worse—there seemed no end in sight.
When I first arrived at the hospital after learning Roy’d had a stroke, I feared the worse. When he survived, even thrived, I’d been so overjoyed at his prognosis I’d never looked back. Selling my business, moving in with Mom, cleaning up her credit, securing her loan, renting out my condo, none of it had mattered as long as, one day soon, Roy would walk again, talk again, eat and drink and wipe himself on his own again.
But “soon” had turned into, “well, a few months.” And “a few months” had turned into “a few years” and now here I was, only able to breathe outside the house, feet in the sand, sucking down chocolate bars instead of coffee because that would be too loud.
I followed the ocean, sneakers in the sand, alone and very, very lonely. My feet seemed to follow the old, familiar path down the beach toward Kellan’s cottage out of habit, hoping against hope he might be as restless, as lonely, as vulnerable and anxious as I was.
But we were out of sync yet again, his cottage was dark and silent, the small beach out front deserted, the only footprints were that of a lone seagull before the waves erased it completely. I felt alone after that, quiet and desolate and dark as I could be.
I sank onto the sand, far from the waves, finishing my chocolate bar, folding the wrapper and sliding it in my pocket, watching the time on my cell phone to make sure I got back for Roy’s wakeup call and preparing him for another long, grueling day.
But before then, I just wanted to sit, calmly and quietly, in the sand in front of Kellan’s cottage. Pathetic, I know, but better than suffocating inside my tiny bedroom, waiting for the alarm clock by Roy’s bed to go off.
The waves crashed and fizzed on the beach, the sky changed colors as the sun came up, the lone seagull returned, walking alone on the silent beach, shadows flitting across its white feathers until at last the sun rose, the time neared and I stood, wiping sand off my butt and peering back one last time at Kellan’s cottage.
There was a light on now, a rosy glow in the shadowy light, making my heart skip a beat to think I might see him, or even a shadow of him, pass by. I wanted to run to the door, knock until he answered and scoop him in a hug, smothering with kisses both desperate and grateful, but my time was no longer my own.
Half an hour earlier? Sure, maybe, but now I had just enough time to walk back along the beach and slip into the house before Roy’s alarm clock woke him and he panicked, thinking I wasn’t there.
The thought made me sad. For him, for mom, for me… for Kellan. Had I ruined a good thing by dragging Kellan to Siesta Key and forcing him, good-natured as he was, into doing my family’s bidding? Had I grown selfish in my desperation to help my family? And had Kellan grown tired of the commitment, to the point of backing out of the house we’d been going to buy together?
A simple phone call, a text, even a knock on the door would have answered my questions. Kellan was no wimp, and he would have told me one way or the other how he was feeling—if only I could summon the courage to ask. Then again, it was harder and harder to do when you were afraid of the answer…
Chapter 50
Kellan
The knock on the door came so soon after Spencer left I was sure it was him again. How else to explain the mere 90-seconds that had passed? “What’d you forget now?” I asked, yanking the door open only to reveal Carla, radiant in a casual sundress and sandals, hair pulled back, in the process of peeling off her sunglasses.
“My mind, apparently!” she said, lingering on the threshold as if afraid to come in. “What… I thought I was supposed to meet Spencer here to look at a potential place.”
I smiled, heart full of relief—she’d showed! After nearly a week of not talking, mostly because we were both too stubborn to admit how foolish we’d been, a call from Spencer had finally done the trick.
“Me too,” I lied—more like a fib, really—just to get her in the door. “The place was open so I thought I’d come in.”
“When… when did you get here?” she asked, perhaps noting the smooth jazz on my cell phone if not the champagne chilling in an ice bucket on the kitchen counter at my back.
“Just a few minutes before you did,” I said, swinging the door wider so that she could hardly ignore the invitation. “I got bored so put on some music waiting for Spencer.”
Another fib. He’d just left, actually, after dropping off the paperwork on the penthouse apartment at Seagull Point, an older but far from old condo toward the south end of Siesta Key. “Penthouse” was dressing it up, actually, just a fancy way for saying a unit on the top floor, but it didn’t affect the price any: $280,000, going fast, which is why I’d agreed to meet with Spencer even after “firing” him earlier in the week.
I was glad I had! Now, the contracts drawn up, the deposit in the bank, all I had to do was convince Carla it was the perfect place, one that fit both our needs—if only she’d look at it objectively.
She nodded, stepping over the threshold as I welcomed her familiar fragrance, musky yet feminine, a pa
rticular perfume she’d grown accustomed to back in South Beach. The air of outside followed her in, sun on her bare shoulders, a shine on her face, expression curious but vague as I shut the door behind her.
The foyer grew dim without the direct sunlight from the hallway and I followed Carla’s eyes as she noted the flickering jar candles on the kitchen counter and even the fresh flowers on the coffee table in the living room.
“Spencer must have felt bad,” she said, drifting toward the flowers, store brought from the grocer around the corner—along with the jar candles and champagne. “For not calling us all week, I mean.”
“He’s not the only one,” I said, our eyes meeting suddenly and just as quickly glancing away.
She nodded and said, “I’m sorry, Kellan, for walking out on you last week. And for not calling all week long, and for not…”
“I’m sorry, too,” I blurted, nodding toward the balcony leading off the living room. “But before we talk about that, I’d like to… show you something.”
“Careful tiger,” she teased, wagging a playful finger even as I eased past her to open the sliding glass door. “We’re a long way from makeup sex just yet!”
I chuckled, realizing just how much I missed her sly sense of humor, quick wit and gentle spirit—and just how badly I wanted all this to work. After a week of being on the fence about whether or not we ever bought a place together, the minute I saw what Spencer had to offer, I knew it was perfect—for both of us. Now if only she’d agree, Carla and I could get back to being what we were before this whole thing started: happy, special and in love.
“Wow,” she said, admiring the view—the oceanfront view—unspoiled and brilliant at five in the afternoon. The balcony overlooked the giant pool and Jacuzzi below, not to mention the long dune line, soft sugar sand and, finally, the crystal blue ocean, visible from the longer part of the wraparound balcony. “I can see why you like this place so much.”
“We’re not done,” I said, taking a risk—and her hand—to lead her toward the wraparound section of the balcony. “I wanted to show you—”
Forbidden: A Student Teacher Romance Page 25