by Cara Colter
She looked at him, glanced around the store. He could clearly see she was struggling with a decision, and he was relieved when something in her relaxed.
“Okay,” she said, and gave him a small, careful smile. It occurred to him that that smile changed everything, changed far more than a dress ever could. He saw the radiance in her, and realized the sighting was precious, the part of herself, along with her femininity, that she kept hidden.
It was a treasure he felt drawn to find.
Still, her idea of fun turned out to be a menace, because she gave him the trashy version of Mrs. Ballard. She flounced out of the dressing room in a too short white leather skirt and a hot-pink halter top, flipped a dark wave of luscious hair over her naked shoulder and watched his reaction solemnly.
The truth was he was flummoxed. She looked awful. And yet his mouth went absolutely dry at the slender temptation of her perfect curves, her toned and tanned legs, the glimpse of her belly button where the top didn’t quite meet the skirt.
When he struggled for words, and all that came out was an uncertain Ah, the solemn look faded from her face and she laughed. She was kidding him, paying him back.
But when she laughed her whole face lit up and her eyes danced with mischief, and he knew he’d glimpsed the treasure he’d been looking for. The real Samantha Hall, despite the costume she had put on.
A half hour later and a half dozen more sedate outfits later, she emerged from the dressing room and twirled in front of him. The defensiveness had left her, and he was delighted at how thoroughly she was enjoying herself. From the sassiness of her pose, she knew it was the perfect outfit, and so did he.
She wore a summer skirt, of light silk, an amazing blend of seaside colors, the turquoise of the sea and the pale blue of the sky. She had paired it with casual sandals that showed the delicate lines of her feet, and he remembered the white-hot feeling of holding that tiny foot in the palm of his hand last night.
When she twirled, her loose, glossy hair fanned out and the skirt flew around her, revealing, again, those amazing legs, and hinting at her gypsy spirit. She had on a cream linen jacket, that she hadn’t done up, and under it was a camisole so simple there should be no reason that it made his mouth go as dry as the more flamboyant pink halter top she had tried on first.
“What do you think?” she asked.
He thought she was the perfect Mrs. Ballard. He thought he had dragged her in here to show her something of herself, and had seen something of himself instead. That he was vulnerable to her.
“You look perfect,” he said gruffly, and then tried to short-circuit his own vulnerability, to make her stop looking at him like that, in a way that made his heart feel like it would swoop out of his chest and land in the palms of her hands. “Let’s go dupe the Finkles.”
The happy look faded from her face, and he was sorry even though he knew it was better for both of them if they didn’t forget what this was all about.
“This is the one,” she said, suddenly cool. “Let’s go.”
He mourned the loss of the magic of the moments they had just shared, even as he knew they made things way too complicated.
At the front desk, Samantha went outside while he paid. The clerk offered to package up the old clothes for him, but he just shook his head. Even if she was mad at him, he never wanted to see her in those clothes—that particular lie—again.
She didn’t ask about her clothes when he joined her. Her eyes were challenging him to back down, to say the subterfuge had gone far enough.
But the look of disdain in her eyes was so much safer for him than the look in her eyes when she had been twirling in front of him, filled with glorious certainty of herself, that he felt more committed than ever to his plan. They’d visit the Finkles, he’d take her home. Leave her with the outfit to assuage some faint guilt he was feeling. If he did end up buying her building, he would keep it strictly business.
Though he wasn’t sure how, since he had utterly failed to keep things strictly business so far.
What if it could be real?
He didn’t even know her, he scoffed at himself. But when he looked at her, her eyes distant, her chin pointed upward with stubbornness and pride, he felt like he did know her. Or wanted to.
“What’s the plan now?” she said.
“We’ll go to the Finkles. Let’s just say we’re engaged instead of married,” he told her.
The stiff look of pride left her face and something crumpled in her eyes. “Even dressed up, I’m not good enough, am I?”
“No!” he said, stunned at her conclusion. “That’s not it at all. The problem is you are way too good for me. Duper of old people, remember?”
And then he hurriedly opened the car door and held it for her, before he gave into the temptation to take her in his arms and erase any thought she’d ever had about not being good enough, before he gave in to the temptation to kiss her until she had not a doubt left about who she really was, a woman, who deserved more than she had ever asked of the world.
He knew if he was smart, he would just pass the turnoff he was looking for and take her straight back to St. John’s Cove, cut his losses.
But now he felt he had to prove to her it was him that was unworthy, not her.
It was probably the stupidest thing he’d ever done, to continue this charade.
But looking back over the events of the last day, since he had first seen Samantha Hall standing at the altar beside his cousin, it seemed to Ethan Ballard he had not made one smart decision. Not one.
He glanced at the woman sitting with her dog slobbering all over her new silk skirt, trying to read her expression.
“Look,” he said awkwardly, “any man would be lucky to call you his wife. And that was before we went shopping.” He was a little shocked by how much he meant that, but he had failed to convince her.
He wanted to just call this whole thing off, forget the Finkles and go home to the mess-free life he took such pride in.
“Humph,” she said skeptically.
If he did call it off now, was Samantha really going to think she had failed to measure up to his standard for a wife? He sighed at how complicated this innocent little deceit had become.
Here he was smack-dab in the middle of a mess of his own making.
Samantha Hall looked straight ahead, refusing to meet his eyes, but the dog slid him a contemptuous look and growled low in its throat.
Ethan Ballard thought he had heard somewhere that dogs were excellent judges of character.
“I used to play baseball,” he said. It was a measure of his desperation that he was trying to win her respect back this way, when he hated it when people liked him for his former career. But the truth was, right about now, Ethan would take her liking any way he could get it.
He wanted that look back in her eyes, he wanted the radiance back, even though it was a very dangerous game he played.
“Didn’t we all?” she said.
“I meant professionally. I played first base for the Red Sox for a season.”
“And you are telling me this why?” Not the tiniest bit of awe in her voice.
“I’m trying to impress you,” he admitted sadly, “since I’ve managed to make such a hash of it so far.”
“Humph.”
“I’ll take that as a fail.”
“I grew up with three brothers,” she told him, and he could hear the sharp annoyance in her voice. “Every single special occasion of my entire life has been spoiled by their obsession with sports. You know where my brothers were the night I graduated from high school?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“In Boston.”
“Oh, boy,” he muttered. “Red Sox?”
She nodded curtly and went back to looking out the window.
It occurred to him he really had stumbled onto the perfect woman for him, a woman capable of not being impressed with what he’d done, who could look straight through that to who he really was.
N
ot that he’d exactly done a great job of showing her that. Maybe he’d even lost who he really was somewhere along the way, in the pursuit of ambition and success.
And maybe she was the kind of woman who could lead him back to it. If he was crazy enough to tangle with her any longer than he absolutely had to.
With relief he saw the sign he’d been looking for—Annie’s Retreat—and he pulled off the main road onto a rutted track.
The first thing that would need work, and a lot of it, was the road, he thought, and it was such a blessed relief to be able to think of that rather than the stillness of the woman beside him.
Life was just plain mean, Sam thought, getting out of the car after the long, jolting ride down a rough road. Waldo bounced out with her. He had snagged her skirt, so she had managed to look upscale for all of fifteen minutes.
Ethan, of course, looked like he was modeling for the summer issue of GQ, in dun-colored safari shorts that looked like he had taken a few minutes to press them before he left his hotel this morning. Ditto for the shirt, a short-sleeved mossy-green cotton, with a subtle Ballard Holdings embroidered in a deeper shade of green over the one buttoned pocket.
No wonder she had been downgraded to fiancée! No matter what he said, she was pretty sure it was because she didn’t fit in his world.
“Maybe we should leave him in the car,” Ethan suggested carefully, as if she was made of glass.
But she was all done being what Ethan wanted her to be, and Waldo came with her, especially if he didn’t fit into Ethan’s world and Ethan’s plans.
“The dog comes,” she said, “and if you don’t like it, or they don’t like it, tough.”
There. That was more like the real Samantha Hall, not like that woman who had stared back at her from the mirror in Sunsational, sensual, grown-up, mature, feminine.
Despite her attempts to harden her emotions, Samantha could not deny Annie’s Retreat was a place out of a dream she had, a dream that she had been able to keep a secret even from herself until she saw this place. These large properties were almost impossible to come by anymore on this coastline.
It made her remember that once upon a time she had dreamed of turning her love of all things animal into an animal refuge, where she could rescue and rehabilitate animals. Given her nonexistent budget, Groom to Grow had been more realistic, and she still ended up caring for the odd stray, like Waldo, that people brought in. But looking at this property she felt that old longing swell up in her.
The road ended in a yard surrounded by a picket fence, the white paint long since given way to the assaults of the salt air. Early-season roses were going crazy over an arbor; beyond it she could see the cottage: saltbox, weathered gray shake siding, white trim in about the same shape as the paint on the fence.
An attempt at a garden had long since gone wild, and yet it charmed anyway: daises, phlox, hollyhock, sewn among scraggly lawn, beach grass and sand.
A path of broken stones wound a crooked course to the house, where red geraniums bloomed in peeling window boxes. The path ended at an old screen door; the red storm door to the cottage was open through it. Sam could look in the door: a dark hallway burst open into a living room where a wall of salt-stained windows faced an unparalleled view of a restless, gray-capped sea.
She was here to look at a cottage out of a dream, a cottage she would never own. She was here with a man out of a dream, a man who was as unattainable for her as the cottage. No matter what he said about her being good enough and trying to impress her.
Ha-ha.
Waldo jumped up on the door, put his paws on the screen, sniffed and let out a joyous howl. A small dog came roaring down the hall, skittered on a rug, righted itself and rammed the door. She was out and after a brief sniff, the two dogs raced around the yard, obviously in the throes of love.
If only it was that easy for people, Sam thought. Though she could fall in love with the man beside her in about half a blink if she allowed herself to.
Not that she would ever be that foolish!
A tiny gnome of a woman came to the door, smiled at them from under a thick fringe of snowwhite hair. She opened the door to them, glancing at the dogs with tolerance.
Then she looked at them with disconcerting directness, her smile widened and she stuck out her hand. “Annie Finkle.”
Ethan took it, introduced himself, then hesitated before he said, “And this is my, er, fiancée, Samantha Hall.”
Samantha glanced at him. He was either a terrible liar, or after downgrading her from the wife position, didn’t even want her to be his fiancée!
She decided, evil or not, to make him pay for that. She looped her arm around his waist, ran her hand casually and possessively along his back, just as she had seen in-love couples do. The way her life was going this might be as close as she would ever get, so she was going to enjoy every minute of it.
And enjoy it even more because it made him so uncomfortable.
“Darling,” she breathed, following Annie into the living room, not letting go of her hold on him, “isn’t this the most adorable house you’ve ever seen?”
“Adorable,” he croaked, and she looked at him and enjoyed the strain she saw in his face. He tried to lift her arm away from him, but she clamped down tighter.
It was a delightful room, completely without pretension. It had dark plank flooring that had never been refinished, and a huge fireplace, the face of it soot-darkened from use. Worn, much used couches faced each other between the huge window and the fireplace. The entire room cried home.
“I love the floor coverings,” Sam said. “They’re unbelievable.”
Annie beamed at her. “I hand-paint historic patterns on oilskins. I make more of them than I can use, unfortunately. Artie would like me to open a shop, but I’m probably too old.” But even as she said it, she looked wistful. She brought herself back to the moment. “This is my favorite room in the house.”
“I love it, too,” Sam breathed. “I can just see myself sitting in that rocking chair in the winter, a fire in the hearth, watching a storm-tossed sea.” Then she realized it didn’t feel like a game, so she upped the ante to remind herself this was fantasy. “Maybe,” she cooed, “there would be a baby at my breast.”
Something darkened in his already too dark eyes. The set of his mouth looked downright grim as he looked at her. She knew she was playing way out of her league, and she didn’t mean baseball, but she stroked his back again, even though it made her stomach drop and her fingers tingle.
She should have known not to even try to get the best of him, because he leaned close to her, inhaled the scent of her hair and then blew his breath into her ear.
“Stop it,” he growled in a low tone, and then he gently nipped her ear, just to let her know if she wanted to play hardball he had plenty of experience.
The tingle Sam had been experiencing in her fingers moved to her toes. And back up again.
“Oh,” Annie said. “Babies! And you’d come in the winter?”
“If I owned this place,” Sam said, “I doubt I’d ever leave it.” No, she could see herself here as if it would be the perfect next stage of her life, not the place of change that she had feared, at all.
She could see all her friends gathering here, the Group of Six not disappearing, but expanding as they acquired mates and children, the circle growing in love and warmth. She could sense those unborn children, see them screeching and running on the beach, toasting marshmallows on bonfires at night, falling asleep in parents’ arms.
This house cast a spell on Sam that made it so easy to see her brothers, settling down at last, coming here with their wives and children, raising another generation who loved Cape Cod year-round.
This was the kind of place where friends and family gathered around the fire on deepest winter nights. Where they played rowdy card games and hysterical rounds of charades, enjoying sanctuary in the love and laughter of friends from the bitter winter storms.
Why was it, it was so
easy to imagine Ethan, an outsider to that circle, as being at the very center of it? Why is it she knew that he would slide into the circle without creating a ripple, as if he had belonged there always?
Was it the place that created this sensation of belonging? A longing for things that weren’t yet, but that she could sense on the horizon?
She realized she was imagining a life that had been once, already. She was believing in something that had died for her when her parents had died.
“I would never leave,” she whispered, and then closed her eyes, remembering what that sense of family and community had been like, and feeling deeply grateful that the love of the Group of Six had kept hope alive inside of her even while she denied it.
She opened her eyes when she realized the room was too quiet, and she feared she had inadvertently revealed too much of herself to Ethan Ballard. She scanned the handsome lines of his face and did not like the quizzical expression as he looked at her, as if he knew she had momentarily forgotten it was a game. She forced herself to explore the curve of his lower back with her fingertips again, to distract him, and herself, from what had just happened.
This time, instead of trying to move away from her, Ethan looked at her hard, and saw way too much. Instead of moving away from her touch, he pulled her closer into his side, so that she could feel the steely length of him…and the strong, steady beat of his heart.
It was a terrible sensation, because it felt to Sam as if he was a man you could rely on when you were tired of being alone and afraid of being lonely, a man you could rely on when you decided, finally, you just wanted to go home.
Annie led them through the dining area to the kitchen. It was small, cramped and dated, but Sam thought it was the coziest kitchen she had ever seen, with its bright yellow paint, white curtains blowing in the breeze from an open window.
She tried to get back into the spirit of pretense by saying, “Oh, I can just imagine baking cookies for you here, darling,” but in her own ears her voice sounded forced and faraway.
Because she could imagine using this kitchen, even though she had never baked a cookie in her life. It still could become the cheerful hub for all the activity she had imagined moments ago.