by Becky Wade
“Oh. My. Goodness,” Holly breathed. Red velvet cake, sheet cake, apple pie, two different cobblers.
They made steady progress, taking time to savor each bite and debate the merits of one dessert against the others. She definitely shouldn’t have opted for a belt today.
When it came time to make the decision, Josh once again asked Holly for her choice. She picked apple pie à la mode. Flaky, cinnamony, and perfect for fall.
The caterer thanked them and disappeared into the kitchen with the plates and silverware.
“I’m going to be gone this weekend,” Josh said, “for Ben’s bachelor party weekend.”
“Where are you headed?”
“I’m taking the guys to Lost Pines Resort outside Austin to golf.”
“It’s beautiful there. Should be fun.” It said a lot about Josh that he hadn’t just thrown money at Ben’s wedding events then blown in on a private jet for forty-eight hours. He’d come to Martinsburg to spend real time with his friend and to handle the details himself.
“I’m expecting two straight days of humiliation,” he said. “I’m a terrible golfer.”
“Not many golf courses in downtown Paris?”
“Not many. Any chance that you have time to meet me up at the Olive Oil Company when I get back? To discuss how we should arrange the tables and food stations?”
She wanted to say yes more than she wanted an appearance on the New York Times bestseller list. But she had to say no. “I’d like to, but I can’t. I’m booked solid next week.”
Josh searched her face, then nodded. “No problem.” He set aside his napkin, rose to his feet, paused. As if second-guessing himself, he returned to his seat, facing his body toward hers. “Can I ask you something?” Consternation stitched through his brow.
“Of course.”
Seriousness, the sort of seriousness that hadn’t entered any of their prior conversations, fell between them. Her pulse began to quicken.
“Have you been helping me because you’re friendly and took pity on me?” Ruefulness curled one corner of his mouth and caused a dimple to flash briefly in his cheek. “Or has any of it been because you wanted to spend time . . . with me?”
Was he asking because he’d guessed that she’d developed feelings for him and wanted to gently disabuse her of any crazy notion of a romance between them? Or maybe he was asking because he wanted to spend time with her?
No, no, no. He hadn’t given her any indication of that.
She smiled breezily and adjusted her position to put more space between them. “I’ve been helping you because I’m friendly and also because I wanted to spend time with you.” Through dint of will, she kept her voice sunny. “It’s been nice to catch up with you. I always hoped you were doing well, Josh. Ben told me you were but it’s been really nice to have the chance to see that for myself.” She’d used the word nice two times and in so doing, damned their current relationship with faint praise.
He concealed his thoughts expertly. She could see no change in him outwardly. None. He was an astute businessman, after all. The owner of a company. He hadn’t gotten to where he was in the world by having the transparent feelings of a girl scout.
And yet . . . she could sense the shadow of sadness that lived in him deepening. Which made her regret her smokescreen approach. She should have replied to his honest question with an honest answer. He’d given her an opening and hadn’t she been half-hoping, maybe three-quarters-hoping, for just this kind of an opportunity to talk to him about the past?
She should be brave—right now at this very moment—and tell him the things she’d been yearning to tell him for eight years. She spoke before she could lose her nerve. “Josh, I . . .”
“Yes?”
She had a hard time getting the rest out. “I want you to know that I’m sorry for any hurt I may have caused you when we broke up.”
He gazed at her, his features guarded and grave.
Why wasn’t he replying? Doubt assailed her. “It could be, of course, that I didn’t cause you any hurt. In which case, you can ignore what I just said.”
“You did hurt me, Holly.”
His bluntness came as a relief. It bolstered her courage. “Okay. I thought so. Are you still angry with me?”
She could hear a distant dog barking and the quiet conversation of the caterer and her employee, cleaning up together in the kitchen.
“There’s a part of me that is,” he admitted.
Her stomach dropped. She didn’t want him to be angry with her, and yet, if she put herself in his shoes she could understand why he was. She fought to order her spiraling thoughts into words. “Here’s the thing. I didn’t tell you the truth back then about my reason for breaking up with you.”
Several taut seconds dragged past. “You told me something about how your feelings had changed and that you wanted to be free to date other people,” he said.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I told you, but neither of those things were true.”
He frowned, his eyebrows drawing down in the center.
“Should . . .” The concerns that had kept her silent on this topic until now rose to the fore of her mind. “Should we just let bygones be bygones? Or do you think there’s value in revisiting what happened at this point?”
“There’s value in it for me, Holly. Even now.”
She slowly inhaled. “Do you remember, back when you first started MIT, that there was a time when you considered returning to Texas?”
“Yes.”
“Your mom . . .” She swallowed. Was this really a good idea? Maybe the bygones thing was better.
“What about my mom?”
“She was upset about the possibility of your leaving MIT. She couldn’t afford to send you anywhere else. But more than that, I mean, MIT, Josh. It was the best possible school for you and she and I both knew it. You were brilliant. You deserved a chance there.”
“And?” he asked grimly.
“Your mom came to see me at UTSA and asked me to break up with you. I—”
“What?” He spoke the word quietly, almost whispering it. Nonetheless, it vibrated with menace.
“She asked me to break up with you so that you’d stay at MIT and focus on your studies.”
His brown eyes blazed as he struggled to process what she’d said, to reframe their breakup through a different lens.
“I still remember her tears,” Holly said. “She cried when she came to see me. Your mom liked me, I think. I definitely liked and trusted and respected her. It wasn’t easy for her to ask me to end things, but she did, and she made a very strong case.”
Josh bent his head and stared at the table as if trying to decipher a code in its surface. “You should have told me that she came to see you.” He lifted his chin again to meet her eyes.
“Maybe. I didn’t because I promised her I wouldn’t.”
“If you had told me, we could have talked it out.”
“Yes, but would you have stayed in school?”
“I don’t know.”
“See? By breaking up with you, at least I could be fairly certain that you’d excel in school and in your career. Those were the things that your mom and I wanted for you.”
“What about what I wanted?” His frank question caused her whole body to still. “Did you or my mom ever stop to consider that?”
“We . . . I mean, we thought that you wanted to leave MIT and come home to Texas.”
“Would that have been so terrible?”
“Yes!”
He cocked his head to the side an inch, waiting.
“Look at you,” Holly said. “You’re a tremendous success.”
“Business success isn’t everything in life.”
She parted her lips to defend—defend what? Defend his own outstanding accomplishments? Business success wasn’t everything in life. She couldn’t take the position that it was, especially since she didn’t know how fulfilled or unfulfilled his own success had left him. “I broke up with you because I wanted w
hat I thought was best for you more than anything else. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Can you forgive me?”
She nearly had cardiac arrest while she waited for him to answer. He was a thoughtful man. A man who could not be slowed when his mind had been made up or rushed when he needed time to think.
He gave her a small, sad smile and placed his hand on his knee, palm up. An invitation.
She placed her hand in his and his fingers tightened around it. She was holding his hand! Sensory details rushed through Holly’s nerves, buzzing and spinning, wondrously sweet. He’d offered her his hand in a gesture of camaraderie, a nostalgic acknowledgment of all they’d shared when they’d been young and bound together by first love.
“It’s forgiven,” Josh said. “I just need time to . . . process.”
“Sure.” Hot moisture pushed against the backs of her eyes. All this time, she’d wanted to tell him that she was sorry. What she hadn’t realized until now? How crucial it would be to hear him say he’d forgiven her. “Thank you.”
“How’s anyone supposed to stay mad at you? Is there a mean bone in your body?”
“There are a few. I can be downright cruel to fictional bad guys.”
He did not appear impressed.
“I have uncharitable thoughts about Mitzi, Amanda and Ben’s wedding coordinator.”
“Huh.”
She got lost in his beautiful eyes, in the texture of his strong, warm fingers around hers. “It took me a really long time to get over you,” she murmured before she’d thought through the comment or given herself full permission to speak it.
“But you eventually did?”
“Eventually.” Maybe that answer was close enough to true not to be a lie? Or maybe that lie would become true next month or next year?
He stood, breaking the link between them, then helped her scoot out her chair. They chatted about the weather while they collected their outerwear. He shrugged into his navy pea coat.
That dratted coat. It made him resemble a hero in a romantic movie. Six-plus feet of intelligent, unattainable handsomeness. She had an overpowering urge to grab the lapels of that coat and rise onto her tiptoes to kiss him. She wanted to ruffle his hair and his mastery of himself, and she really wanted to shatter the careful good manners between them.
That wayward thought, coupled with her uninvited affection for him, sent a stab of fear through her.
What was that famous groundhog’s name? Punxsutawney Phil? Every time he saw his shadow and returned to his hole, folks could expect six more weeks of winter. She did not want Josh to become her Punxsutawney Phil. She refused to face eight more years of heartache every time she saw him. She’d done one bout of heartache courtesy of Josh. She could not do another eight years. No thank you.
They drove back to Martinsburg, the car filled with subdued conversation about her next book release and his favorite brands of coffee. Inwardly, though, Holly was already beginning to wonder whether she’d done the right thing when she’d told him her schedule was booked. She’d done what she’d had to do for the sake of self-preservation. Still, their outings had been wonderful. Talking with him, teasing him, seeing him smile. Those things had been a joy, the sort of deep joy that didn’t often cross her path. The days ahead, days empty of him, already looked like a desert.
Holly, he must have fabulous women with names like Babette or Amelie available to him in Paris. He might even have a Parisian girlfriend at this very moment. She did not expressly know that he didn’t. He probably did. She was simply a high school girlfriend from long ago.
She’d longed for closure and the talk they’d just had had given her exactly that. Everything she’d hoped to say to him, she’d said. He’d told her he’d forgiven her.
It was enough.
It had to be enough.
On Saturday, Holly sat cross-legged on the floor of her parents’ kitchen, Shadow in her lap. Nothing but the sun easing through the windows illuminated the chilly interior, which they warmed to sixty-five for Shadow’s comfort in the fall and winter months.
The cat lifted her head and purred while Holly scratched under her chin. “Nice home you got here, Shadow.”
The feline gave her a haughty look that said, It’s no less than I deserve.
“Quite right.” More chin scratching.
She hadn’t heard from Josh since their outing to the caterer. She hadn’t expected to. Yesterday, he would have left town for Ben’s bachelor party.
He didn’t live in Martinsburg. In fact, Josh had only returned to Martinsburg eighteen days ago. So it infuriated her that she was so strongly aware of his absence this weekend. Everywhere she went felt devoid of excitement. The colors muted. More lonely. Why? Because she knew that he wasn’t here anymore.
“This is why I can’t get any more twisted up over him than I have already,” she told Shadow, whose eyelids were drooping closed. “The time I spent with him has messed with my head enough.”
Meow, Shadow said. Which Holly translated to mean, Get a grip, girl.
“Get a grip is precisely what I need to do. I’m going to leave here and go home and write like the wind. I’m really . . . I’m just going to pour out some great, great pages that will keep readers up late into the night. I left my heroine in a den of cutthroats with nothing but her rapier for defense in order to come here, you realize. Now I need to go home and rescue her.”
Shadow cracked one dubious eye.
“Have I given you enough socialization?”
The cat gave a terrific stretch, which meant she wanted more petting. “Fine.” Holly stroked her family’s cat and reminded herself that this was how she spent her weekends. This was her destiny.
Was this really his destiny?
Josh sat in the driver’s seat of a golf cart, watching one of Ben’s college fraternity buddies hit a drive. The twenty guys on the trip hadn’t been content with eighteen holes. They’d played eighteen this morning, stopped for lunch, and were out on the course again for another eighteen. To be honest, he’d far rather be discussing asynchronous JavaScript and XML with one of his programmers. “Nice shot.”
Another of Ben’s friends moved toward the tee box.
In the distance, Josh could see Ben putting on the green. It had been satisfying to watch Ben and the others enjoying the weekend, despite that he felt like a spectator to their fun rather than a participant.
He’d been in an irritable mood since the day he and Holly had last gone to the caterer’s. After their conversation, he’d made himself wait a day so that he could organize his thoughts and emotions before calling his mom. She’d confirmed everything Holly had told him and reiterated all the reasons Holly had voiced. She’d even gone so far as to tell him that she’d always felt guilty about the grief she’d caused him and Holly.
She’d expected both him and Holly to rebound and start dating again after their breakup, she’d said. They’d been eighteen years old. She’d thought that they’d recover faster than they had. She’d apologized to him and asked him to pass along her regret and heartfelt best wishes to Holly.
He tightened his grip on the steering wheel, rubbing the side of his thumb against it.
Despite his mother’s good intentions when she’d asked Holly to end things with him, there was no possible way that she could ever fully know what it was she’d screwed up. She’d viewed his relationship with Holly the way most parents probably viewed the relationships of their teenage children, as light and passing and juvenile.
He and Holly were the only two people who knew how much they’d loved each other. And only he knew the scars Holly’s loss had left on him.
None of them were completely without fault. He’d been shortsighted to want to leave MIT. His mom had been wrong to take matters into her own hands. And Holly should have told him about his mom’s visit the day it had happened.
Did he fault Holly the most, though?
No. Back then, his mom had been a forty-five-year-o
ld woman armed with a mother’s fierce protectiveness of her only child. Holly had been a college freshman living apart from her family for the first time. He understood why she’d been swayed, and he believed her when she told him she’d done what she thought best for him.
It was going to take practice to think of Holly without the bitterness that had accompanied his thoughts of her for so long. But it also felt right to try. She’d explained and apologized. He’d forgiven her.
Who’s to say, anyway? The way things had happened might actually have been the best thing for him. He’d built his company into the stuff his dreams had been made of.
Josh adjusted his Nike ball cap, slanting it lower.
He hadn’t needed Holly to shop for rehearsal dinner locations with him, nor to visit his caterer once, much less twice. She’d been humoring him. He’d made up something about visiting the Olive Oil company next week, solely so that he’d have another reason to see her. She’d turned him down. Even so, when she’d whispered that it had taken her a long time to get over him, stupid hope had gripped his heart.
He hadn’t planned to say anything to her, that day or any day, that would make him vulnerable to her again. But he’d asked her if she’d gotten over him eventually.
She’d looked at him with that painfully beautiful face, her dusky blue eyes kind, her skin clear, faint pink on her cheekbones, a long strand of glossy, light brown hair falling in front of her shoulder. Instead of saying not yet or any other answer he could have worked with, she’d said that she had. Gotten over him.
He wished he could say the same for himself.
Her words, spoken in the sweetest possible way, had hit him like a slap because they’d shown him just how different her emotions were from his own.
Josh’s passenger pushed his driver into one of the bags strapped to the back of the cart and took his seat. Josh drove them toward where he’d hooked his ball.
He was here for Ben. In Texas during the month of November, and also on this weekend trip. It frustrated him that he couldn’t seem to think about anything except Holly, the woman he’d been trying not to love for eight years. He was weary of trying not to love her.