She sighed his name, just a whispered breath between their mouths, but the sound seemed to sink through all the layers of careful protection around his heart.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, responding eagerly to his kiss. Tenderness surged through him, raw and terrifying. He wanted to hang on tight and never let go, wanted to stand in Abigail’s old living room for the rest of his life with a soft rain clicking against the windows and Julia Hudson Blair in his arms.
They kissed for a long time, until he was breathing hard and light-headed, until her mouth was swollen, until his body cried out for more and more.
He didn’t know how long they would have continued—forever if he’d had his way—when suddenly he heard the one thing guaranteed to shatter the moment and the mood like a hard, cold downpour.
“Mama? Are you there? I woke up.”
The sweet, high voice cut through the room like a buzz saw. He stiffened, his insides cold suddenly, and frantically looked to the doorway, aghast at what he had done and that her daughter had caught them at it.
He only knew a small measure of relief when he realized the voice was coming from the walkie-talkie she had brought downstairs.
Julia was breathing just as hard as he was, her eyes wide and dazed and her cheeks flushed.
Even through his dismay, he had to clench his fists at his side to keep from reaching for her again.
She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, then walked to the walkie-talkie and picked it up.
“I’m here, baby,” she said, her voice slightly ragged. “How are you feeling?”
“My throat still hurts a little but I’m okay,” Maddie answered. “Where are you, Mama?”
Julia flashed a quick glance at him, then looked away. “Downstairs with W—Mr. Garrett. Didn’t you see my note?”
“Yes, when I woke up. But I was just wondering if you were still down there.”
“I am.”
“Is Conan there with you?”
Will saw her sweep the room with her gaze until she found the dog still curled up by the couch. “He’s right here. I’ll bring him up with me if you want some company.”
“Thanks, Mama.”
She clipped the walkie-talkie to her belt, angled slightly away from him so he couldn’t see her expression, then she seemed to draw another deep breath before she turned to face him.
“I...have to go up. Maddie needs me.”
“Right.” He ached to touch her again, just one more time, but he fiercely clamped down on the desire, wanting her gone almost as much as he wanted to sweep her into his arms again.
Without warning, he was suddenly furious. Damn her, damn her, for making him want again—for this churn of his blood pouring into the frozen edges inside him. Pain prickled through him, like he had just shoved frostbitten fingers into boiling water.
He didn’t want this, didn’t want to feel again. Hadn’t he made that clear? So why the hell did she have to come in here, with her sweet smile and her warm eyes and her soft curves.
“Will—”
“Don’t say anything,” he bit out. “This was a mistake. It’s been a mistake for me to spend even a minute with you since you came back to town.”
At his sudden attack, shock and hurt flared in her green eyes and he hated himself all over again but that didn’t change what he knew he had to do.
“You didn’t think it was a mistake a moment ago,” she murmured.
He couldn’t deny the truth of that. “I’m attracted to you. That’s obvious, isn’t it? I have been since I was sixteen years old. But I don’t want to be. You’re in my way every single time I turn around.”
He lashed out, needing only to make her understand even as he was appalled at his words, at the way her spine seemed to stiffen with each syllable.
Still, he couldn’t seem to hold them back once he started. They gushed between them, ugly and harsh.
“You’re always coming around to help me work, showing up at my house dragging your kids along, crowding me every second. Don’t you get it? I don’t want you around! Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
Conan rose and growled and for the first time in Will’s memory the dog looked menacing. At the same time, a branch outside Anna’s apartment clawed and scratched against the window, whipped by a sudden microburst of wind.
Julia seemed to ignore all the external distractions. She drew in a deep breath, her face paler than he had ever seen it.
“That’s not fair,” she said, her voice low and tight.
He raked a hand through his hair, hating himself, hating her, hating Robin and Cara for leaving him this empty, harsh, cruel husk of a man. “I know. I know it’s not fair. You don’t deserve to bear the weight of all that, Julia. I know that, but I can’t help it. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. I need you to leave me alone. Please. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. Not with you. Not with anyone.”
The branch scraped the glass harder and he made a mental note to prune it for Sage and Anna, even as he fought down the urge to pound something, to smash his fists hard into the new drywall he had put in a few months earlier.
She studied him for a long moment, her features taut.
“Okay,” she finally murmured and headed for the door to Anna’s apartment.
Before she left, she turned around to face him one last time. “I appreciate your frankness. Since I know you’re a fair man, I’m sure you’ll allow me the same privilege.”
What the hell was he supposed to say to that? He waited, though he wanted nothing more than to shove the door closed behind her and lock it tight.
“I have something I want to say, though I know it’s not my place and none of my business. Still, I think you need to hear it from someone.”
She paused, and seemed to be gathering her thoughts. When she spoke, her words sliced at him like a band saw.
“Will, do you really think Robin and Cara would want this for you?”
“Don’t.”
He couldn’t bear a lecture or a commentary or whatever she planned. Not now, not about this.
She shook her head. “No. I’m going to say this. And then you can push me away all you want, as you’ve been doing since I came back to Cannon Beach. I want you to ask yourself if your wife and little girl would want you to spend the rest of your life wallowing in your pain, smothering yourself in it. From all I’ve heard about Robin, it sounds as if she was generous and loving to everyone. Sage has told me what a good friend she was to everyone, how people were always drawn to her because of her kindness and her cheerful nature. I’m sorry I never had the chance to meet her. But from what I’ve heard of her, I can’t imagine Robin would find it any tribute to her kind and giving nature that you want you to close yourself away from life as some kind of...of penance because she’s gone.”
She looked as if she had more she wanted to say, but to his relief she only gave him one more long look then turned to gesture to Conan. The dog added his glare to hers, giving Will what could only be described as the snake-eye, then followed her out the door.
Will stood for a long moment, an ache in his chest and her scent still swirling around him. He closed his eyes, remembering again the sweetness of her touch, how fiercely he had wanted to hold on tight, to surrender completely and let her work her healing magic.
He had to leave.
That was all there was to it. He couldn’t stay in Cannon Beach with Julia and her kids just a few houses away. There was no way in the small community of year-round residents that he could avoid her, and seeing her, spending any time with her, was obviously a mistake.
He had meant what he said. She crowded him and he couldn’t deal with it anymore.
He knew after his outburst just now that she wouldn’t make any effort to spend time with him, but they were still boun
d to bump into each other once in a while and he had just proved to himself that he had no powers of resistance where she was concerned.
He had no other option but to escape.
He pulled out his cell phone. He knew the number was there—he had dialed it only the night before but in the end he had lost his nerve and hung up.
With the wind still whipping the tree branches outside like angry fists, he found it quickly, hit the button to redial and waited for it to ring.
As he might have expected, he was sent immediately to voice-messaging. For a moment he considered hanging up again but the sweet scent of spring flowers drifted to him and he knew this was what he had to do.
He drew in a breath. “Eben, this is Will Garrett,” he began. “I’d like to talk about your offer, if it’s still open.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“SIMON, HANDS TO YOURSELF.”
Her son snatched his fingers back an instant before they would have dipped into the frosting on the frill-bedecked sheet cake for Sage’s wedding shower.
“I only wanted a little smackeral,” he complained.
Julia sighed, even as she fought a smile. This was why she was destined to be a lousy mother, she decided. How on earth was she supposed to have the gumption to properly discipline her son when he knew he could charm her every time by quoting Winnie the Pooh?
“No smackerals, little or otherwise,” she said as sternly as she could manage. “After the bridal shower you can have all the leftovers you want but Sage wouldn’t want grimy little finger trails dipping through her pretty cake, would she?”
“Sage wouldn’t mind,” he grumbled.
All right, he was probably correct on that observation. Sage was remarkably even-tempered for a bride and she adored Julia’s twins and spoiled them both relentlessly.
But as their mother, it was Julia’s responsibility to teach them little things like manners, and she couldn’t let him get away with it, smackerals or not.
“I mind,” she said firmly. “Tell you what, if you promise to help Anna and me put all the chairs and tables away after the shower, you can appease your sugar buzz with one of the cookies you and Maddie and I made last night.”
He grinned and reached for one. “Can I take one to Mad? She’s in her room.”
“As long as you don’t forget where you were taking it and eat that one too along the way.”
“I would never do that!” he protested, with just a shade too much offended innocence.
Julia shook her head, smiling as she put the finishing touches on the cake.
Simon paused at the doorway. “Can we eat our cookies outside and play with Conan for a while since the rain finally stopped?”
“Of course,” she answered. After an entire week straight of rain, she knew both of her children were suffering from acute cases of cabin fever.
A moment later, she heard the door slam then the pounding of two little sets of feet hurtling down the stairs, joined shortly after by enthusiastic barking.
Unable to resist, she moved to the window overlooking the backyard just in time to see Maddie pick up an armful of fallen leaves and toss them into the air, her face beaming with joy at being outside to savor the October sunshine. Not far away, Conan and Simon were already wrestling in the grass together.
The two of them loved this place—the old house, with its quirks and its personality, the yard and Abigail’s beautiful gardens, the wild and gorgeous ocean just a few footsteps away.
They were thriving here, just as she had hoped. They already had good friends at school, they were doing well in their classes. Maddie’s health seemed to have taken a giant leap forward and improved immeasurably in the nearly two months they had been in Cannon Beach.
She should be so happy. Her children were happy, her job was working out well, they had all settled into a routine.
So why couldn’t she shake this lingering depression that seemed to have settled on her shoulders as summer slid into autumn? She shifted her gaze from the Brambleberry House yard to another house just a few hundred yards up the beach.
There was the answer to the question of why she couldn’t seem to shake her gray mood. Will Garrett. She hadn’t seen him since their disastrous encounter nearly two weeks earlier but her insides still churned with dismay when she remembered his blunt words telling her to leave him alone, and then her own presumptuous reply.
She had been way out of line to bring Robin and Cara into the whole thing, to basically accuse him of dishonoring his wife and daughter’s memory simply because he continued to push Julia away.
She had had no right to tell him how he ought to grieve or to pretend she knew what his wife might have wanted for him. She had never even met the woman.
Because of her lingering shame at her own temerity, she was almost grateful she hadn’t seen him since, even to catch a glimpse of him through the pines as he moved around his house.
That’s what she told herself, anyway. If she stood at her window at night watching the lights in his house, hoping for some shadow to move across a window, well, that was her own pathetic little secret.
With one last sigh, she forced herself to move away from the window and return to the kitchen and the cake. A few moments later, with a final flourish, she judged it ready and carefully picked it up to carry it downstairs to Anna’s apartment.
Since her arms were full, she managed to ring the doorbell with her elbow. Anna opened almost immediately. Though she smiled, Julia didn’t miss the troubled expression in her eyes.
She was probably just busy setting up for the shower, Julia told herself. She knew Anna had been distracted with problems at her two giftshops as well, though she seemed reluctant to talk about them.
Julia smiled and held out the cake. “Watch out. Masterpiece coming through.”
Anna’s expression lifted slightly as she looked at the autumn-themed cake, with its richly colored oak and maple leaves and pine boughs, all crafted of frosting.
Sage wasn’t one for frilly lace and other traditional wedding decorations. Given her job as a naturalist and her love of the outdoors, Julia and Anna had picked a nature theme for the shower they were throwing and the cake was to be the centerpiece of their decorations.
“Oh! Oh, it’s beautiful!”
“Told you it would be,” Julia said with undeniable satisfaction as she carried the cake inside Anna’s apartment to a table set in a corner.
“You were absolutely right,” Sage said from the couch. “I can’t believe you did all that in one afternoon!”
Julia shrugged. “I don’t have a lot of domestic skills but I can decorate a cake like nobody’s business. I told you I put myself through college working in a bakery, so if the teaching thing ever falls through, I’ve at least got something to fall back on.”
She grinned at them both and was surprised when they didn’t smile back. Instead, they exchanged grim looks.
“What is it? What’s wrong? Is it the cake? I tried to decorate it just as we discussed.”
“It’s not the cake,” Anna assured her. “The cake is gorgeous.”
“Did somebody cancel, then?”
“No. Everybody’s still coming, as far as I know.” Sage sighed. “I just hung up the phone with Eben.”
She frowned. “Is everything okay with Chloe?”
“No. Nothing like that. Julia, it’s not Eben or Chloe or anything to do with the shower. It’s Will.”
Her stomach cramped suddenly and for a moment she couldn’t seem to breathe. “What...what’s wrong with Will?”
“He’s leaving,” Anna said, her usual matter-of-fact tone sounding strained.
“Leaving?”
Sage nodded, her eyes distressed. “Apparently he’s taken a traveling job with Spencer Hotels. A sort of carpentry trouble-sho
oter, traveling around to their renovation sites and overseeing the work of the local builders. He’s starting right after the wedding. He accepted the job a few weeks ago but apparently Eben didn’t seem to think it was anything worth mentioning to me until just now on the phone, purely in passing.”
She scowled, apparently at her absent fiancé. Julia barely noticed, too lost in her own shock. Two weeks ago. She didn’t miss the significance of that, not for a minute.
They had kissed right here in this very living room and she could think of nothing else but how he had all but begged her to leave him alone and then in her hurt, she had said such nervy, terrible things to him.
Ask yourself if your wife and little girl would want you to spend the rest of your life wallowing in your pain, smothering yourself in it.
Oh, what had she done? Now he had taken a traveling job with Eben’s company and she could hardly seem to work her brain around it. He was leaving Cannon Beach—the home he loved, his friends, the business he had work so hard to build.
Because of her.
She knew it had to be so. What other reason could he have?
She had made him too uncomfortable, had pushed too hard.
I can’t imagine Robin would find it any tribute that you want you to close yourself away from life as some kind of penance because she’s gone.
Her face burned and her stomach seemed to twist into a snarled tangle. What had she done?
“What do you think, Julia?”
She jerked her mind back to the conversation to realize Sage was speaking to her and as her silence dragged on, both women were giving her curious looks.
It was obvious they expected some response from her but as she hadn’t heard the question, she didn’t know at all what to say.
“I’m sorry. What?”
“I said that you’ve known him longer than any of us. What could he be thinking?”
“Oh no. I don’t know him,” she murmured. “Not really.”
Perhaps that was the trouble, she admitted to herself. She had this idealized image of Will from years ago when she had loved him as a girl. Had she truly allowed herself to accept the reality of all the years and the pain between them?
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