by Gina Wilkins
She froze, one hand still in her hair. Very slowly she dropped her arm to her side. “Surely you aren’t suggesting that I should go out with other men.”
His face could have been carved from marble for all the expression she could read there. “You just said yourself that you would like to get out more.”
“I meant with you.”
He had to hear the emotions in her voice—the hurt, the disappointment. The disbelief. “Look, Lindsey—”
Drawing herself up to her full five feet three inches, she crossed her arms over her chest and gazed unblinkingly at him. “You really wouldn’t mind if I go out again with Bo? Someone else, maybe?”
“I—”
“When were you planning to ask me out, Dan? On a real date, I mean. Or did you ever intend to appear in public with me?”
“Look, you know how I feel about my privacy.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I know how you feel about that. What I don’t know is how you feel about me. About us.”
He couldn’t seem to come up with an answer. He just stood there, looking at her with that inscrutable expression.
“There has to be a reason you don’t want anyone to know about us,” she continued. “Is it because you don’t see a future for us? I’m just a secret affair for you until you get tired of me? Or maybe you’re already tired of me. Maybe that’s why you’ve been trying to convince me to date other men. Even to move away. Is that it, Dan?”
“You don’t understand. I’ve kept our affair a secret as much for your sake as for mine.”
“For my sake?” She might have laughed if she hadn’t been so upset.
“Yes. You have a lot of friends in this town. People you admire and care about. I don’t want it to be awkward for you here when—if this thing between us falls apart.”
“When this thing falls apart. That’s what you really mean, isn’t it? You don’t give us a chance, do you?”
“I’m just trying to be realistic. One of us has to be.”
“And what does that mean?”
He was beginning to go on the defensive, which was obviously making him irritable. “We both know there’s no guarantee that this will work out. With all the initial strikes against us, in addition to the usual pressures of a new relationship, it’s quite likely that one or both of us will decide it would be better if we just go back to being friends.”
She tightened her arms around herself. “I won’t be the one to decide that.”
Taking a step toward her, he spoke more gently. “You can’t know that for certain. We’re in new territory here. You could very well decide that reality isn’t nearly as interesting or exciting as infatuation.”
The word hit her with the force of a slap. “Infatuation?” she repeated carefully.
His expression turned wary again. “Maybe I phrased that badly. What I meant was—”
“I think I know exactly what you meant.” Almost vibrating with temper, she glared at him, remembering the conversation with Riley that she now suspected Dan had overheard. “Are you under the impression that I still have a starry-eyed schoolgirl crush on you? You think I’m too dense or too naive to know the difference between love and infatuation?”
He seemed to pale a bit at her use of the L word—which, of course, only made her angrier. “I know I’m not an easy guy to be involved with,” he offered. “I work too much and I’m too settled in my rather dull routines, and I have a hard time showing my feelings. No one would blame you for getting bored with all that.”
She stamped her foot—then immediately regretted doing so because she didn’t want him thinking of her as a temperamental kid. But he made her so furious. “Damn it, I am not Melanie!” she shouted. “I hate her for what she put you through—but mostly I hate her because I’m the one having to deal with the aftermath. If you’re afraid of getting involved again, afraid of being hurt again—say so! Don’t you dare try to put it all off on me.”
“I’m just trying to be sensible,” he muttered without quite meeting her eyes.
She had never been so hurt or so angry in her entire adult life. “You never intended to tell anyone about us, did you? You let me chase you—let me make a fool out of myself over you—and then you decided to humor me until I…what? Outgrew the crush I had on you? Got bored and moved on in search of bigger, better adventures? After all, an immature, empty-headed little princess like me couldn’t possibly know what she really wants, right? It was up to you, the responsible, mature, sensible one to make sure neither of us would be embarrassed when I realized my terrible mistake.”
His narrowed brown eyes snapped with barely suppressed emotion. “You aren’t being fair.”
“Well, excuse me if I’m not in the mood to protect your tender feelings!” Pausing in the doorway, she turned to fire one parting shot. “Congratulations, Dan. You’ve finally accomplished something I’ve been trying to do for the past twenty years. Thanks to you, I can finally, wholeheartedly say that I’m completely over you.”
It seemed like a pretty good exit line. She decided she’d better make her escape before she ruined it by bursting into tears.
She would have the rest of her life to cry over him.
Dan had always found peace fishing. The lapping of the water against the sides of the boat. The call of birds overhead. The soft wind against his face. The quiet—no phones, computers, fax machines. He wore a pager on his belt, but that would go off only in an emergency.
He should have been completely relaxed. Content. But, as his companion on this particular outing observed, he was neither.
“Want to talk about it?” Cameron asked casually, keeping his eyes focused on his fishing line.
Wearing a battered fishing cap Dan had once given him, Cameron had shown up at Dan’s door on this Sunday afternoon and all but kidnapped him. Dan had been increasingly antisocial during the past couple of weeks, spending less time at his office and more time at home alone, which had probably caused some talk around town. He hadn’t seen Lindsey since she’d walked out on him just over two weeks ago—didn’t even know where she was, for certain. She’d left town with no more than a message for him that he wasn’t to worry about her. That she would be just fine.
He wasn’t so sure the same could be said about him.
He had initially resisted Cameron’s fishing invitation, thinking he’d rather spend the time holed up by himself, but Cameron had been insistent. Dan had ended up in this boat almost before he knew it, not quite certain how his friend had accomplished the feat.
“Talk about what?” he asked, his tone as offhanded as Cameron’s.
“Whatever’s been eating you the past couple of weeks. I gotta tell you, man, your hang-dog expression is breaking my heart.”
Though Cameron had spoken teasingly, Dan sensed that he was somewhat serious. He sighed. “Hell, Cam, I wouldn’t know how to begin,” he muttered.
“Let me get you started. You and Lindsey had a major falling out, right?”
Wincing at the sound of her name, Dan nodded grimly. “We had a pretty serious quarrel. Did she tell you about it?”
And if she had, just how much had she told him?
“No,” Cameron replied. “She didn’t tell me anything specifically. She just asked for some time off and said she had some things to work out. She looked so miserable that I couldn’t help worrying about her. Marjorie asked me later if Lindsey had mentioned you when she asked for the leave of absence. That got me thinking—Marjorie’s pretty perceptive, you know.”
“Yes, I’m well aware of that.” Actually, the last time he’d seen her he’d had the feeling that Marjorie could read him all too well.
Cameron worked his bait a bit, then let it settle again. “You and I haven’t talked much about my life before I moved here, have we?”
“Not a lot.” Dan knew that Cameron had suffered an unhappy childhood—his parents had been wealthy but abusive. He’d worked as a reporter in Dallas for several years, ending up in Edstown when h
is pursuit of a juicy political exposé had made him enemies who’d beaten him and left him for dead on a little-traveled rural road. Serena had found him there, battered, broken and suffering a head injury that had robbed him of his memory for a time. Cameron had fallen in love with Serena, married her and left his former life behind so completely that he hardly ever mentioned it, maintaining only a few ties with close friends in Texas, who sometimes visited him here, since he rarely went back. “You still haven’t recovered all your memories, have you?”
“I’ll probably never get some of them back,” Cameron confirmed. “There are pretty big gaps in my past—most of which I would probably just as soon leave alone. There are a few memories that have returned to haunt me, though. Mistakes I made that I wish I could forget again.”
Dan wondered where this was leading. “Er…I’m sure everyone has things in their past they’d rather not think about. I certainly have.” His ill-advised marriage, for one.
“One of the worst mistakes I ever made involved a longtime friend. Her name was Amber. We went to high school together and remained in the same circle of friends for years afterward. Our gang used to get together at least once a week to visit and play games, watch movies and just hang out. You’ve met some of them when they’ve visited me here.”
“Yeah. They all seem nice. I don’t remember meeting Amber, though.”
“No, you never met her. Her last name was Wallace. Sound familiar?”
Dan frowned. Wallace was the surname Cameron had selected apparently at random when he couldn’t remember his own name. A Freudian coincidence, perhaps?
“Amber and I made the huge mistake of trying to turn our friendship into something more,” Cameron continued. “She sort of initiated it, but I didn’t resist too much. She was pretty and amusing, and we obviously had a great deal in common. But that was all there was between us, I’m afraid. And it wasn’t enough.”
Grimacing, Dan suddenly realized exactly where this was headed. “Uh, Cam…”
“Needless to say, it was a disaster. I hurt her very badly, and I’ve never forgiven myself completely for doing so.”
Dan squirmed on the boat seat. “I’m sure you didn’t intentionally hurt her,” he muttered, remembering the shattered look in Lindsey’s eyes when she walked away from him.
“No. But that wasn’t an excuse. I knew better all along than to get involved with her and to let her start making plans for us.”
Dan nodded glumly. “Mistaking friendship for love usually does lead to heartache.”
“Especially when only one of the two is in love,” Cameron agreed. “And the other is operating under a delusion.”
“Whatever happened to Amber? Do you know?”
“Yeah. She moved out West, met someone else and got married. I’ve heard she’s happy. She deserves to be.”
Dan swallowed hard. Would he be as happy for Lindsey if she announced plans to marry someone else? He hoped he would—but he doubted it. “Is there a point to this story?” he asked, to get that disturbing image out of his mind.
“Sorry if I’m stepping over the line here, but I thought you could use someone to talk to. I know it helped me to talk to my friend Shane after Amber and I broke up.”
“I appreciate it, but—”
“You and Lindsey did get involved, didn’t you?”
Dan heaved a heavy sigh. “Yeah.”
“I thought so. Now you’re hating yourself for hurting her.”
Maybe Cameron really did understand. “Yeah. That pretty well sums it up.”
“Believe me, I know how you feel. You probably feel the same way I did about Amber. I was very fond of her—but I just couldn’t love her the way she wanted me to.”
Dan frowned. “Well, no, that’s not—”
“She was crazy about me—or at least, she thought she was. She started hinting about marriage and babies and growing old together—and I broke into a cold sweat. I guess you know that feeling.”
Actually, the thought of marrying Lindsey and having babies with her didn’t scare Dan at all. It was the possibility that she would change her mind just as he allowed himself to start believing in that future that terrified him.
Funny. He and Melanie had never talked about the future. Other than one significant episode, they’d never seriously discussed having a family. Maybe they’d both known subconsciously from the beginning that theirs was not a till-death-do-us-part commitment.
“I imagine Lindsey will get over you—eventually,” Cameron continued. “She’ll realize someday that it wasn’t her fault that you didn’t love her. She’s just not your type, that’s all. The same way Amber wasn’t my type.”
“Cam, you’ve got it backward.”
Cameron raised an eyebrow. “Surely you don’t expect me to believe Lindsey’s the one who changed her mind and dumped you.”
“Well, no.” At least, not yet, he added mentally.
“I didn’t think so. Lindsey’s not the love-’em-and-leave-’em type. She’s too centered and levelheaded—something I noticed almost as soon as I met her. Because she’s so petite and cute and ebullient, there’s a tendency to underestimate her. But she’s a woman who knows what she wants and doesn’t change her mind on a whim.”
“She’s still young.”
“Twenty-six? Hardly a child.”
Absorbed in his thoughts, Dan missed a strike. The fish weren’t biting worth a damn, and he’d missed the first bite he’d gotten.
“Don’t torment yourself, Dan,” Cameron advised kindly. “As you said, she’s still young. She’ll get over you eventually. Just as Amber got on with her life without me—though Amber probably doesn’t take things as hard as Lindsey does. Amber’s a little more flighty. She tends to romanticize everything—including me. She tried to believe I was someone I wasn’t. You can’t say the same about Lindsey. Not the way you two fuss and scrap over your jobs. She definitely knows your flaws, but she must have decided they didn’t overshadow your strengths.”
Okay, Dan knew Lindsey was all too familiar with his flaws. She’d called him a stubborn, pigheaded, uncooperative, dictatorial workaholic so many times he could clearly hear her voice saying those words in his head right then.
She didn’t romanticize him. But she’d decided she wanted him, anyway. And he’d driven her away.
Cameron reeled in his lure and cast toward a more promising-looking spot. “I was incredibly fortunate to find Serena after that fiasco with Amber. I really didn’t think I’d ever find anyone I could love like that. Amber was a fine woman, but she wasn’t the right one for me. I’m sure you feel pretty much the same way about Lindsey. You see? I know exactly how you feel. I hope that helps you.”
“Cam?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
“Too much?”
“Yeah.”
Cameron jerked his hand back to set the hook when a fish finally took his bait. “I never was much of a confidant. But I’m a hell of a fisherman,” he said as he reeled in a nice-size crappie.
“Actually, I think you’re underestimating one of your talents and overestimating another,” Dan drawled. “But you’ve given me a lot to think about.”
Cameron grinned. “That’s going to be tough—as underequipped as you are for heavy thinking.”
Before Dan could come up with a suitably sarcastic reply, a fish hit his own lure. Relieved to have an excuse to change the subject, he concentrated on landing the small bass. He knew he would spend plenty of time later mulling over the things Cameron had said.
Lindsey had always loved watching spring come to the Ozarks. The rolling hills on the horizon looked as though they’d been painted in soft-green watercolors. Pink-and-white dogwoods dotted the landscape, while fluffy white clouds floated lazily across a vivid-blue sky. Glittering lake water lapped against the rocky shore where she stood, stirred by a floral-scented breeze that kissed her cheek and toyed with her hair.
She was staying in a fishing cabin nestled o
n the edge of a picturesque mountain lake. The cabin belonged to Riley’s uncle Bud, and it had been Riley who had offered it to Lindsey for a few weeks. Bud had insisted he wouldn’t be visiting his own place anytime soon. He and Riley had both urged Lindsey to take a vacation, speculating aloud that overwork and exhaustion were the cause of her recent depression.
Without correcting them, she’d gratefully accepted the offer.
If she had any artistic talent, she would try to capture this scene on canvas. As it was, she had to commit it to memory instead. In the future, when she desperately needed solace, she would think about this place, this time, and hope it would bring her peace.
She huddled more snugly into her lightweight denim jacket, her hands buried in the lined pockets. It wasn’t a particularly cool breeze that blew against her, but it made her shiver, anyway. She’d had trouble feeling warm enough lately. Actually, she’d been cold ever since Dan had accused her of being foolishly infatuated with him. Those staggeringly insensitive words had left a heart-deep chill she wasn’t sure would ever go away completely.
How could he know her so well and yet remain so completely clueless?
The words she’d thrown at him as she’d left his bedroom echoed in her mind, almost drowning out the sounds of water and birds and rustling new leaves. Congratulations, Dan. You’ve finally accomplished something I’ve been trying to do for the past twenty years. Thanks to you, I can finally, wholeheartedly say that I’m completely over you.
What a lie that had been. Pure bravado. She would never be completely over him. But she would survive. She’d put her house on the market, get a job in some big, anonymous city and make a new life for herself, just as she had planned to do before she’d made the stupid mistake of letting herself believe Dan was starting to feel about her the way she’d felt about him for so long.
If there was one thing she had learned during the past few years, it was that she was fully capable of taking care of herself. She didn’t need a man in her life—especially one so thickheaded that he couldn’t tell the difference between an infatuated schoolgirl and a woman who loved him.