Nantucket Romance 3-in-1 Bundle (62 page)
Neither did he. “All right.” He opened the driver’s side door for her.
“I’ll file papers for the . . . divorce. And cover all the costs.” A breeze blew, and dead leaves scuttled past their feet. There was a nip in the air that warned of winter’s approach. “And I’ll send for my treadmill,” she said. “I think I got everything else.”
Including my heart.
Did she think she could run from these feelings? Did she think mere miles would separate her from his love?
Lucas studied her face, memorizing the way her eyes looked when she squinted against sun, the way her brows puckered when she frowned. He reached out and smoothed the hair the wind had ruffled, wanting to remember the feel of it between his fingers.
She closed her eyes on a sigh. “I hate good-byes.”
He thought of Emily and how sudden her death had been. He’d always regretted that he hadn’t kissed her that morning when he left for work. He was running late and only called good-bye on his way out the door.
Lucas took Kate’s face in his palm, waiting for her to look at him. If she was going to leave him, she was going to do it with her eyes wide open.
He closed the space between them, pressing a soft kiss to her lips. Her hair smelled of lilacs, and her lips tasted like honey. He wanted to remember everything about her. He wanted to close his eyes at night and be able to summon the feel of her lips on his, the sound of her voice.
Kate pulled away. “Good-bye.”
She refused to meet his gaze as she lowered herself into the car and put her keys in the ignition. Refused to look at him as she put the car in Reverse and backed out of the drive. He watched until her car disappeared over the slope in the road, knowing that all that awaited him was a house that would feel empty without her.
His feet felt heavy as he entered the house. Bo, seeming to sense his sadness, nudged his leg, tried to shepherd Lucas toward the couch. But Lucas didn’t want to sit and think. Think about Kate leaving—getting further away by the minute.
The room seemed big. Kate had decluttered every corner of the house, leaving it spick-and-span, but now it felt bare. The treadmill was the only token of her existence, and it stood in the corner like a memorial.
He walked to the bedroom and stopped in the doorway. The spaces where her alarm clock and jewelry box had been were empty. He saw something on her nightstand and went closer. A small blue-velvet box. He opened it and looked at the earrings he’d given her for their first-month anniversary. It was as if she’d wanted to leave everything behind, to have no reminder of her time with him.
A scrap of paper on the clean hardwood floor caught his eye, and he retrieved it. It was a list of things she’d done in her preparation to leave. A laugh caught in his throat. Kate and her lists. Someday she would learn that life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.
He threw the paper in the wastebasket and left the room. It felt as if the walls of the house were closing in on him. He realized for the first time that the house smelled like Kate. He wanted to get away from this place, occupy his mind with something else. If it weren’t so late, he’d go sailing.
Bo barked from the back of the house. Lucas followed the sound to where the dog sat by the back door. Bo craned his massive head around, looking at him with inquisitive brown eyes.
“Wanna go for a walk, boy?”
Bo wagged his tail.
At least it would get Lucas out of the house.
They walked westward down the beach, Lucas occasionally tossing a piece of driftwood for Bo to fetch. The sun lowered in the sky, casting a pinkish hue over the beach. Bo trotted beside him, sometimes wading into the incoming surf or chasing a seagull that landed nearby. The dog had just returned from such a chase when Lucas heard it: the haunting sound of the ferry’s horn in the distance.
He stopped, a catch in his breath, a stutter in his heart. The sound was the period at the end of a sentence, the whisper of good-bye from a lover, the clock striking midnight for Cinderella.
When your heart is broken and you’re
ready to settle for anything in jeans,
repeat these words to yourself: “I do not
need a man to be happy.”
—Excerpt from
Finding Mr. Right-for-You
by Dr. Kate.
Kate opened the
Columbia Flier
on the picnic table and perused the apartment rentals section. The savory smell of grilled sirloin wafted by on the breeze. Her dad, draped in a red canvas apron, checked the meat, then closed the grill lid.
Kate noticed a new apartment listing and marked the ad with a yellow highlighter.
“See anything interesting?” Her dad sat across from her and brushed a red leaf from the wooden table with the side of his hand.
“There are a couple new ones I’ll check on tomorrow. I’m still considering the one on Green Meadow Drive.” Kate didn’t want to overstay her welcome. She’d planned on staying at a hotel, but her dad had insisted she take his spare room. And she had to admit it had been a relief to hide away the past three weeks.
“How much longer on the steaks?” she asked.
“Oh, seven or eight minutes,” he said.
“I’ll put the salad together.” Kate entered the house through the sliding door, careful not to fingerprint the glass. She found the head of lettuce and chopped it, then sliced a ripe tomato and placed the knife in the dishwasher.
Her cell rang as she was getting the dressing. Every time it rang, her thoughts turned to mush. She hadn’t heard from Lucas since she left, but Jamie had e-mailed her twice.
It’s not Lucas, Kate. For heaven’s sake. Get on with your life.
Bryan had called the day she arrived in Columbia. She’d told him not to call again, and so far, he’d respected her wishes.
She pulled her cell from her purse’s side pocket and answered.
“Kate. How are you?” Her agent’s voice greeted her.
Kate squelched the inevitable disappointment. “Hi, Ronald. I’m okay. Getting settled in, looking for an apartment, avoiding the media. You know, the usual.” It had been easier than she’d hoped to avoid the press since only a few people knew her whereabouts.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Ronald said. “It looks like they’ve run out of things to say about you.”
“That’s what we were hoping.” A flurry of papers had covered the story initially, and several tabloids had joined the fray, but the scandal seemed to have died down already.
“That part’s working for us.” The caution in his tone warned of a negative flip side.
“What’s wrong? Have you heard from Chloe or Paul?” Her editor had been quiet. In fact, Kate hadn’t heard from Chloe since their conference call over three weeks earlier.
“I called her this morning just to check in,” Ronald said. “I’m afraid sales have dropped off quite dramatically. She mentioned the ugly ‘R’ word.”
“Returns?” It was every author’s worst fear—that the stores would be unable to sell their stock of books and would return them to the publisher, unsold.
Kate set the plastic tongs in the salad bowl and faced the sliding door. “I don’t understand. I’ve done what they asked. I’ve avoided the spotlight, and everything has died down. I thought that’s what they wanted.”
“Yeah, I know. I called Pam after I talked to Chloe to get her take. The public is impossible to predict. They’d been hoping that with no new information, the story would die and the public would forget it.”
“But that hasn’t happened?”
“Pam said it’s too early to say for sure. But the numbers aren’t looking good.”
Kate ran her hand through her hair. All this for nothing? The public apparently believed the reports and had decided she was a fraud. They were voting with their dollars, and she’d lost.
“Is it too late to fix it?”
“If you mean going to the press with your side of the story, Pam didn’t recommend it. She thinks coming this late, it would feel phony. The public would be suspicious of all the time you were quiet.”
Kate slapped the counter. “I was quiet because they told me to be.”
“I know, kiddo, I know.”
Kate dragged her hand down her hair and anchored the ends in her fist, pulling until her scalp stung.
“I’m afraid there’s more bad news.”
Kate braced herself. “My column?” If she lost her syndicated column, what would she have left?
“I’m afraid so,” Ronald said. “I’m sorry.”
Not my column.
She’d already lost
Glamour
, but the column had been her baby forever. It was how she’d become Dr. Kate. She’d helped thousands of readers, and now it was gone. She remembered all the hours she’d spent reading letters and formulating answers. She remembered all the letters she’d answered privately because column space prevented her from answering all of them, and some of the letters seemed too desperate to ignore.
“We’ll get through this, kiddo. Let’s give it more time. Maybe your book sales will pick up again.”
Kate grasped onto hope. “Is that what Pam said?”
If anyone would know, it would be Pam. Her publicity experience allowed her to read the public better than anyone.
“No, she didn’t say that. But you’re too good at giving advice to be holed up in some office. It’s your calling, your gift, and we can’t give up just yet.”
It felt like it was over. She could write all the articles and books she wanted, but if readers didn’t trust her anymore, what did it matter?
Kate hung up and put the salad on the table as her dad entered with a plate of sizzling steaks. They served themselves and began to eat. Kate hardly tasted the food.
They were halfway through the meal before her dad spoke. “You’re quiet.” He speared a chunk of meat and put it in his mouth.
Kate told him about Ronald’s phone call and the apparent effect the scandal had on her career. “It’s not looking good, Dad.” That was an understatement.
He set his knife and fork down. “Look, Kate. I realize it must be devastating and maybe even humiliating for your wedding fiasco to be public knowledge. But your goal has always been to help troubled relationships. Ever since you were a little girl, you were helping people solve problems. You don’t need fame or notoriety or even a book contract to achieve that.”
Kate swallowed the bite of salad. He was right. She had enjoyed helping couples in counseling. However, it was more logical to prevent the impossible relationships than it was to fix them. And no one sought counseling until there was a problem. That’s why writing relationship books made sense.
But lately, Kate wondered if she knew anything about relationships at all. Everything that made sense in theory was more complicated in real-life application. Case in point: Lucas.
Her stomach clamped down on the food she’d eaten, and she pushed her plate away, the sirloin half-eaten. A week ago, she’d realized her night with Lucas hadn’t resulted in a pregnancy. She’d expected profound relief. Instead she’d gone to her room and closed the door before having a good cry. What was wrong with her?
“What’s really wrong, Kate?” Her dad’s brown eyes were an antique reflection of her own.
“My career is falling apart. Isn’t that reason enough to be depressed?”
Her dad sliced the steak with the serrated knife and placed it beside his plate. “Is that why you don’t eat? Why you stare off into space for minutes at a time? Why your eyes are so sad all the time?”
Kate’s head throbbed. She’d had a constant headache since she’d left Nantucket. Like her body was having withdrawal from the island.
Or from Lucas.
She stifled the thought.
She stood and carried her plate to the sink. “I’d rather not talk about it.” She didn’t even want to think about it, but her mind never cooperated. She tried to put it behind her, but her thoughts returned to the island, to Lucas, like waves to a shoreline.
“It’s that Lucas, isn’t it?”
Kate gave him a warning look. He’d never been one to pry, and she hoped he didn’t start now.
“Don’t look at me like that. You’ve been moping around here for—”
“I am not moping.”
“—three weeks, and I may be a man, but I know lovesick when I see it.”
Kate gave a wry laugh. “Lovesick?” She pulled the sprayer from the sink and ran water over her plate. “It was an arrangement, Daddy, remember? You were there. You read the papers.”
Her dad’s chair scraped the ceramic tile as he stood. “And I saw the look in that boy’s eyes on your wedding day.” He held out his plate.
Kate pulled it from his hands. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
She sprayed the salad dressing and A1 Sauce off the plate while her father cleared the table. Her father had imagined what he’d seen on Lucas’s face.
“Anyway,” Kate said. “It could never have worked. We were different as day and night.”
“Opposites attract, you know.” He leaned around her to wet a dishrag and went to wipe down the oak table.
“It’s not like that. We have nothing in common, Daddy, and I’m not going to spend the rest my life arguing like—” She stopped, realizing she was crossing a line. Who was she to criticize her parents’ marriage?
“Like your mom and me?” Her dad finished the thought.
Kate loaded the two plates back to back in the dishwasher and shut the door. The crestfallen look on her dad’s face exacerbated her regret. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
He nodded slowly. “No, that’s fair.” He leaned against the kitchen counter across from her, bracing his hands against the ledge, reminding her of the way Lucas had stood so many times.
“I’ve always wondered how much you remembered,” he said.
She remembered more than the yelling. She remembered the time her dad had dumped sacks of her mom’s new clothes out the front door. She could still see the new dresses, tags still attached, strewn across the spring green lawn. “When two people are so different, conflict is inevitable,” Kate said.
Her dad shook his head. “Your mother and I weren’t so different.”