The Shadows Trilogy (Box Set: Edge of Shadows, Shadows Deep, Veiled Shadows)

by Cege Smith

  His eyes twinkled and Ellie lost her train of thought again for a moment. She cleared her throat to gain her composure. She was acting like she’d never been around a man in her life!

  “Really, David, I appreciate the gesture. But I barely know you and I’m sure my life isn’t that interesting,” she said.

  “Well, how do people get to know each other if they don’t start a conversation? I know that I’ve wanted to get to know you better for quite a while. This seems like an ideal time, since I’m already here.” He sipped his coffee again and then sat in silence.

  “What do you want to know?” Ellie was curious and flattered. He had wanted to get to know her better for quite a while? Ellie was lucky that she could remember what she did yesterday, so any interest from David could have easily gone by unnoticed. That got her mind spinning on what crazy, inane things he had witnessed her doing or saying during his previous visits.

  “Okay, let’s start with the basics.” David set his coffee down and rubbed his hands together as if devising some kind of scheme.

  Ellie couldn’t help but laugh at the silly gesture. There was something about him that made her feel warm inside, like she had known him before. She could feel herself relaxing into the conversation. David seemed interested, and she was definitely interested in him.

  “Your name is Ellie Coulter,” David started.

  “Elizabeth,” Ellie corrected. “Elizabeth Coulter.”

  “See? I’ve learned something about you already.” David seemed delighted by that tidbit of information. “You own this fabulous establishment called Ellie’s Coffee Isle. Very clever, I might add, and great personal branding. You have a dog named Skipper.” David was ticking the items off on his hand.

  “Now, since you were so bold as to ask me how old I was, I’d like to ask the same. I realize it’s not proper, but you can’t be more than twenty-five. How old are you, Ms. Coulter?”

  Ellie laughed and decided to play along. “Although it is quite impertinent to ask a woman’s age, sir, I am not ashamed to say that I am thirty-three.”

  “A good and fine age.” David nodded solemnly.

  She watched his face carefully for any indication that the fact that she was older than him was going to bother him. There was none.

  “Of course, I still think you’re twenty-five and just trying to be more grown up,” he teased.

  “Nope. I wouldn’t go back to twenty-five for anything.” The words were spoken with a bit too much conviction, and David picked up on it right away.

  “Why?” he asked.

  Ellie sighed. It seemed inevitable that she was going to have to let some information loose. “At twenty-five I didn’t know what I wanted or where I was going. I didn’t have my business yet, and I was in the midst of making the biggest mistake of my life.”

  “And that was…” David prodded. He took another sip of his coffee.

  “Getting married.” Her answer was short and terse.

  “Ah.” David sat back and sipped his coffee. He waited for her to speak again.

  “But I’m not now, my divorce was final months ago,” she said with a dismissive hand gesture. She didn’t want him to think for a moment she was still hung up on Jake.

  “I figured with the lack of a wedding ring and no manly presence around here that was the case,” David replied.

  “Hey!” There was an exclamation from behind the counter.

  David and Ellie turned. Kevin was standing there with his hands on his hips. His expression was so ridiculous that Ellie couldn’t help but laugh, and David joined in.

  “Sorry, man.” David chuckled and held up his hands. “No offense. Present company excluded, of course.”

  “Well, in that case, you are forgiven.” Kevin smiled and batted his eyes at David.

  Ellie rolled her eyes. “Don’t you have some work to do, Kevin?” she said a bit too sweetly.

  They had been friends long enough that Kevin knew he was in trouble. Kevin’s cheeks turned red. He grabbed a towel and headed over to the other side of the room, cleaning tables that he had cleaned fifteen minutes ago.

  “Kids?”

  David’s question caught her off guard and felt like a punch in the stomach. “No,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I wanted them. Pretty bad. But looking back on things, having kids with Jake would have made the situation even worse.”

  “I’m sorry. About the divorce.” David’s voice was gentle.

  “That’s okay.” She started straightening her papers again so that she didn’t need to look him in the eye. “I’m really not. I got married for the wrong reasons and that didn’t work out well. My life is better now.”

  “Is it?” he asked.

  He reached across the table and rested his hand on her forearm, stilling her hands. She looked down at it in shock. She could feel the warmth of it radiating through her sleeve. She gulped and finally looked up. He was watching her reaction closely.

  “What do you mean? Of course it is.”

  “I mentioned it this morning, but it seems like you haven’t been all that happy whenever I’ve been here,” he said.

  “Who are you now? My therapist?” Ellie’s voice rose a notch. “I don’t know how any of this is your business.” His touch completely unnerved her, and she was having a hard time processing the strong emotions he was awakening within her.

  David pulled his hand away, and instantly Ellie regretted her words. For just a moment she had felt a connection with David, and if he had pressed she thought that she would have spilled everything.

  Linda appeared beside her and put her hand on Ellie’s shoulder. Ellie instantly felt calmer. It was amazing how Linda had that effect on her.

  “Shhh, dear. You’ll scare the customers,” she said as she smiled a “forgive her” smile in David’s direction. “I have a wonderful idea. It has been a long time since I’ve had a dinner party. Ever since Lloyd passed away it’s really just me puttering around in that big house. It would be delightful to have some company. How does an intimate little get-together sound?”

  “That sounds great, Linda.” David grinned.

  Ellie was amazed at how comfortable and confident he was, as though he got dinner party invitations all the time from random people on the street. But then again Ellie found that men often agreed to whatever Linda said. It was a fascinating study sometimes, and she felt a bit disappointed that David didn’t seem to be immune.

  “What do you think, Ellie?” Linda looked at her.

  “You know that I’d be there, Linda. Of course.” Ellie’s tone was sulky.

  “Wonderful! Would Saturday night work for you, David? I know you have a busy schedule there at the hospital.”

  Ellie knew that if necessary Linda would rearrange the entire event to accommodate David’s schedule, and she frowned again.

  “I’m sure I can manage something,” he replied. “Speaking of, I suppose I should start heading in that direction. Thanks for the coffee, Linda.” David stood and looked at Ellie. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Ellie. I just want to be your friend. I’d like to have another coffee again the next time I’m in if you have time.”

  Ellie shrugged. She had to think about what all this meant and make some sense of it first. Her reaction to David was throwing her for a loop.

  It was David’s turn to frown. That was obviously not the reaction he wanted, but it was the best she was going to give under the circumstances. “I guess I’ll see you ladies on Saturday then.”

  Linda pushed a piece of paper into his hand. “Here’s my address. Come around six. No need to bring anything. I’ll take care of it all.” Then she lowered her voice a notch. “And please, no jeans, dear. I like the chance to dress it up a little.”

  David nodded. “Sounds great, Linda.” Then he turned and left the store without another glance at Ellie.

  Ellie started to say something when a towel flew out of the air and hit her in the head. “Hey!” she sputtered. She stood and found herself con
fronted, one on each side, by Kevin and Linda. “What the hell is the matter with you two today?”

  “You’ve been moping around here for months. Now some fantastically handsome man comes along, shows obvious interest, and you start getting all uppity with him!” Kevin exclaimed.

  “Really, dear, how can you expect to find someone new if you are such a sourpuss all the time?” Linda chimed in right after him.

  Ellie closed her eyes against the onslaught. She threw up her hands. “Look, look, look. I’m only going to say this once. When I am ready, I will be much less ‘uppity’ and ‘sourpuss’ like.” Her no-nonsense tone quieted her two friends. “Until then, trying to force anything when I am not ready is not a good idea.”

  “But don’t you like David?” Linda asked. “He seems like such an upstanding young man. He certainly is quite handsome.”

  “I don’t know anything about David,” Ellie exclaimed in frustration. Then she added, “But he seems nice enough.”

  “Well, this dinner party sounds like just the right idea then!” Linda smiled in satisfaction.

  “Dinner party? What dinner party?” Kevin asked.

  “Oh, come along, dear. You and Eric are invited too, of course.” Linda led Kevin away.

  Ellie sat back down in her chair. Maybe her friends were right. Maybe she had sat in her depression for too long. She stared out the window, wishing for simpler times. As independent as she had always been, she wondered what it would feel like to have a man around to take care of her. She had married Jake expecting that exact scenario, and instead she had wound up with an even bigger mess on her hands.

  “If only they had left me a trust fund,” she quipped to herself. Her parents had seemed well to do, but it had all been an image put on for their friends. Their untimely death had left Ellie alone and defenseless against the world. She gathered her things, ready to go home.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Skipper was delighted to see Ellie when she walked through the door, and jumped up and down demanding her immediate attention. She sat on the floor and played with him for a few minutes.

  “Okay, boy. It’ll be just a minute and then I’ll take you outside.”

  She picked up the phone receiver and heard the insistent beeping that she had a message. This was yet another odd thing in an already odd day. Ellie rarely received calls, and when she did it was usually a telemarketer trying to sell something. She entered the pass code and tensed as she heard Jake’s voice.

  “Ellie? Are you there? Geez, I’m so dumb. You’re probably at the shop. I’d call you there, but you’d probably just hang up on me. Look, I wanna talk to you, Ellie. There are some things we need to talk about. Call me.”

  The slur was so slight that no one else would have been able to tell it was there, but Ellie could. Jake had been drinking. Again. She wondered if he had gone to work at all that day, or if he had passed out somewhere in a drunken stupor. Then she wondered why she was concerned at all. It wasn’t her problem. She hoped that by now he was passed out somewhere and would forget that he had called. She hoped.

  She leashed Skipper and started out on their evening walk, following the same path that they had taken that morning. She needed the fresh air, and the cool evening breeze was refreshing. She thought about David and how he had managed to turn her life upside down within the space of one day. She went over their conversations, going over every word in her head several times looking for hidden nuances.

  She couldn’t quite put her finger on why, but it seemed like she had known David for a long time. She couldn’t remember ever feeling like that with anyone. It was strange, and that could be part of the reason talking with him had made her so jumpy. It wasn’t in her nature to trust something that came so easily. There was usually something nasty hidden underneath.

  In the end, she concluded that it had all been innocent enough, and she did genuinely like him. The fact that he was smokin’ hot was a nice benefit.

  As she and Skipper made their way around the lake, she looked at the stately homes that lined the street facing the lakeshore. Some were more like cottages, but some looked like huge Italian villas and southern plantation houses transplanted to the urban Minnesota landscape.

  The houses were beautiful, and many of them were still dark in the growing twilight, their owners not yet home from work. What stories those houses could tell, Ellie thought. She had always been a bit of a romantic. She imagined women in ball gowns, and their escorts in their crisp tuxedos doing waltzes across a brightly lit dance floor. They would have secret rendezvous in the rose gardens with nothing more than stolen kisses to cool their ardor during a time when romance and chivalry were alive and well. Ellie was reminded of her dream from earlier that morning and she smiled.

  Ellie knew that Linda lived in one of these exquisite mansions on the other side of the lake. Linda didn’t talk much about what her husband had done for work when he was alive other than “he did very well for himself and our family.”

  Ellie was surprised to feel butterflies of excitement in her stomach when she thought about Linda’s little event. She’d never been to a real dinner party before, and it wouldn’t be so bad to get dressed up for once. Plus David was going to be there, and although she didn’t know exactly what she felt for him yet, the idea was ripe with anticipation. Perhaps she might even go shopping for something new to wear.

  Later, with Skipper curled up in her lap, she pulled a blanket tight around her shoulders and stared into the fireplace. It was one of the few amenities that the small apartment offered. The big old houses seemed to have a fireplace in every room. Ellie sipped some tea and thought about her past.

  The embers beneath the flames glowed and she felt overwhelmed by the black depression that seemed to be her constant companion. She didn’t know how she could have messed everything up in her life so badly. She thought about her parents, and felt that they would be terribly disappointed in her. She felt like a complete failure. There were a few bright spots: her shop, her dog, and her friends, but she still felt empty. She wondered if that may be why her encounters with David had affected her so strangely. Since she was eight years old she had wanted nothing so desperately than to belong and be loved.

  Tears started to stream down her face. She knew deep down inside that she had never loved Jake, at least not the way you are supposed to love the man you are going to spend the rest of your life with. It was her horrible little secret. When they’d met he’d been so confident and carefree about life, which was the complete opposite of Ellie. She had been rigid, intense, and conservative. They’d met when she was twenty-five and he had just turned thirty. She’d never really even had a boyfriend before him and the attention of an older man had been flattering and a bit empowering. But still she had felt deep down in her bones that it couldn’t last.

  How was she supposed to know that Jake’s appearance of being carefree was actually recklessness? That his confidence was actually a daredevil’s taunt against the universe? She had been completely unprepared for the unending rounds of emergency room visits as Jake seemed to be testing every physical limit of his body and constant worrying about what Jake would do next. But it was when he started whispering to himself in the middle of the night that she knew he was becoming unhinged. She had always felt like she was waiting for someone, and she had been a fool to think that Jake Coulter was her knight in shining armor.

  It had been the dream of the normalcy of marriage, of settling down and having a family, that had propelled her forward in the relationship. Those were all she had ever wanted since she was little. After both of her parents passed away when she was eight, leaving her alone in a very scary world, she had been shuttled between foster homes for the rest of her childhood. She had been fortunate that she hadn’t suffered abuse or neglect. The families had been kind, albeit distant, and she had grown up a loner. It had been so long since she had felt that sense of belonging, to anyone or anything, that she had forgotten what it was like. She craved it. When Ja
ke came along her defenses had been weakened from years of a solitary existence, and she had caved.

  Ellie thought about her earlier walk, and her daydreaming of what life would have been like if she had grown up privileged and happy in one of those beautiful houses. She sighed. That romantic daydreaming side of her made her feel incredibly self-indulgent. She was too old for thoughts like that.

  Skipper yipped in a puppy dream and startled her out of her musings. She set the mug down on the table beside her and gently shifted around the little dog. She padded in slippers over to her bookcase. Another world seemed much more welcoming than her own reality right now.

  She ran her fingers across the bindings, slowing as she came across several historical romances. Linda had practically forced them on her a few months ago, telling her that they would do her some good. She felt silly the first time she actually read one, but then they became addictive. She was embarrassed to admit that she had added a few to the collection on her own. She pulled one of the paperbacks off the shelf and returned to her oversized armchair by the fire.

  “We’re all allowed our guilty pleasures,” she explained to Skipper, who was awake now and staring at her. “Cut it out. Quit looking at me. You can’t make me feel bad.”

  Skipper cocked his head as if saying, “I didn’t say anything.”

  Ellie opened the book and shut out reality, if only for a short while.

  The phone woke her from a deep slumber. The fire was only soft embers now, dying a slow death. She glanced at her watch. It was three a.m. She had a feeling she knew who it was, and considered letting it ring. But what if it was something important?

  She moved Skipper off her lap and walked to the phone. She looked at the caller ID, but it said “Not Available.” She picked up the receiver.

  “Hello,” she said warily.

  “Stupid woman,” was the snarling reply.