With This Kiss (18 page)

She wanted to say so many things to her husband, wanted to tell him how much she loved him, but she could see how angry he was with her. And how she’d only dug the hole between them deeper with her comments about Sean and Rebecca.

There was a time when they could have talked about the women their sons were interested in without fighting about it.

He closed the dishwasher. “Will the sander keep you up?”

“You’re not coming to bed?”

“There’s a lot of work to do still.”

Just yesterday, he might have asked her to come upstairs and help him again. But she’d had her chance.

And she couldn’t stand the thought of begging. Of being turned down.

Of knowing for sure that he didn’t want her anymore.

She forced herself to stand up, to keep what was left of her pride intact. At least until she left the kitchen.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll put my earplugs in.”

She went through the motions of getting ready for bed in the guest room on the first floor where they were going to be sleeping while they worked on the master bedroom floor. She lay down on the bed, curling up on her side with her arms around her knees.

Even with her earplugs in she could feel the vibrations from the sander moving through her and was glad that they would keep her awake until Bill came to bed. Until
she could put her arms around him and say she was sorry without actually having to say the words.

But even after the vibrations stopped, he never came.

And she had never been able to sleep without him in the bed beside her.

S
ean walked Rebecca upstairs to her door. The laughter had gone a long way to relaxing her, but she suddenly felt as skittish as a teenage girl on her first date.

Even though, as she had to remind herself again and again, no one in their right mind could have even remotely called that tense dinner with Sean’s parents a date.

“Thank you for going with me tonight,” he said again as they stood outside her door.

His eyes were even darker than usual, his jaw tighter. She wanted to make him laugh the way he’d made her laugh, but she didn’t have the words. The smartest thing was just to say, “You’re welcome” and go inside her suite and lock the door and be glad that she made it out of the night unscathed, without doing something as truly stupid as throwing her arms around Sean’s shoulders and dragging his mouth down to hers for the kiss she’d been tasting in her dreams.

But, then, she couldn’t say a word. How could she when she’d just made the mistake of looking up at him and getting lost in his eyes. A short lock of hair had fallen over
his forehead and she reached up to brush it away before she could stop herself.

But even that might have been okay if it hadn’t been for the slight way he’d turned his jaw into her hand before she forced herself to pull away from him.

He’d needed her already once tonight, as a buffer between him and his parents, and she’d given in to that need.

Now, right here, right now, just steps away from her bedroom, she knew he needed her again—whether he liked it or not, whether he wanted to feel anything for her or not. Only this time he didn’t need her because he was the son of a difficult mother.

No, tonight he needed her for all the same reasons she needed him. Heat. Sparks.

Undeniable attraction.

Five seconds… they were less than five seconds from that kiss, and her heart was fluttering like mad. But then his heat was gone as he took a step—a large one—away from her, so that they were both backed up against the hallway walls.

“Don’t be afraid to wake me up if you hear any more noises tonight.”

Disappointment flared so strong within her at his husky words that she was unable to speak for a moment and simply had to answer with a nod.

“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “Sure.”

She blindly groped for her doorknob, somehow got her key inside, and said good night.

Rebecca didn’t know how to feel. It wasn’t a strange state for her. On the contrary, that internal confusion was precisely what got her in trouble all the time. And here she was, on the verge of trouble again.

Yes, Stu was still gone. And she was going to have to start making phone calls to vendors, to let them know the festival was canceled, very shortly. No question, both of those things sucked. Big time.

But surrounding all of that was Sean.

And the way he’d made her laugh.

He wasn’t supposed to make her laugh, darn it. She could barricade her heart against the way he was always bringing her treats and continually kept her from knocking her head on something sharp and hard. Even the travel stories he told her, she could convince herself, weren’t all that different from the stories that guests would tell.

But that laughter he’d yanked from her after what had to be the most awkward dinner
ever
… how was she supposed to fight the pure joy she’d felt from just being with him?

Stu’s friendship had made her happy, but there was never any tingling, none of the heat that she had with Sean.

Amazingly, her bedroom was actually warm—semi-warm, anyway—and although she’d been certain she wouldn’t sleep a wink, she got a good six hours.

By the time she woke and ate the bowl of oatmeal Mrs. Higgins had whipped together for her in the kitchen, Jean, another of her part-time assistants, was at the desk. With a few rare hours to herself, Rebecca knew they were hours she would have otherwise put to use organizing the festival.

But she still couldn’t bear the thought of making the phone calls to call off the festival quite yet.

The sun was shining and she pulled on a coat, hoping some outside time would settle her down and get her to a
place where she could deliver bad news to everyone who had been so excited about tapping the maples.

Rebecca had always been drawn to the maple forest. She’d never seen anything like it before, almost symmetrical rows of large trees. In the fall, the display of colors on the trees had been nothing short of mind-blowing. She hadn’t expected the budding leaves of spring to even come close to matching that beauty, but amazingly, a few minutes later as she stood in the middle of the trees, their bare branches reaching out all around her, above her head, into the blue sky, she was overwhelmed by beauty. Growing up in Connecticut, she’d loved being outside, to go to the park or swim at the local pool, but being outside was different here. More as if she was part of nature, rather than just being witness to it.

Four months ago, as fall started to give way to winter, she’d conceived of the Tapping of the Maples Festival on a walk through this forest, as bright leaves fell to the ground all around her. She felt as if she could take root like one of the seedlings between the large trees, that the mature growth would shelter her from storms and let enough light through for her to grow and stretch and become strong.

Sap had been leaking from the trees, even then, and she’d reached out to brush some onto the tip of her finger.

The pure maple syrup had taste like magic. Like happiness.

She’d wanted to share that joy, that sweetness.

She still did. But now, with the petition…

She sighed and leaned against one of the maples, pressing her palm flat against it. Maybe there was a reason for all of this. For Stu leaving and Sean appearing and Mr. Radin trying to stop her festival.

What was it people always said? That when one door closed, a window opened up? That sometimes the best things in life sprang from the most difficult?

She’d always been optimistic. Some might say blindly so, given her track record with jobs and men. These past weeks were certainly doing their best to test that optimism.

Crunching over some pebbles on the way down to the beach, thinking of the way she’d been trying to skip them on the water the previous morning had her smiling in remembrance. But that was before she’d had a clue what was coming down the pike, that Mr. Radin was going to walk in and smash her festival to bits with a stack of official papers.

Her smile fell away, but she bent down and picked up the pebbles anyway. They were cold and smooth in her palm, and as she moved closer and closer to the water, her hand itched with the urge to let them all go, to see them rain down on the patch of blue water that was even bigger this morning.

Summer was coming; she could smell it in the air. And she was glad.

If only her heart would thaw out along with the ice and snow. If only everything would set itself to rights, instead of getting more and more jumbled up by the moment.

Without thinking, she wound up and chucked the pebbles at the lake.

Plop. Plop. Splash. Kerplunk.

“Now that’s an interesting technique.”

She turned to see Celeste at her side. More than once Rebecca had thought the woman was as silent as a ghost. One minute she wasn’t there; the next she was. Or you’d
be speaking to her, and in a moment’s distraction, Celeste would be gone.

Rebecca hadn’t forgotten their conversation from the previous morning, but she was wary of pressing her friend on such a sensitive subject. She knew the appropriate thing to do was to respect Celeste’s privacy, to accept that she’d been told as much as she was going to hear for the time being.

But when Celeste chucked her own handful of pebbles a few seconds later, Rebecca had to laugh out loud.

Oh, it felt good to laugh. How long had it been since she’d really laughed like she had last night with Sean? Weeks, certainly. But even when Stu had still been here, even when they’d still been engaged, she hadn’t really been happy.

It stunned Rebecca to realize that she hadn’t really been happy for a very long time. And even though she couldn’t possibly see how she could be happy now with everything crashing down around her, laughing with Sean and his grandmother was tapping into a part of her that felt really important.

And sadly neglected.

“You really remind me of Sean,” she told Celeste.

Oh god, where had those words come from? She felt her face flush, prayed that Celeste would think it was the cold and sunshine making her cheeks turn bright pink.

“What a lovely compliment that is, Rebecca.”

Rebecca nodded, knew she should shut up already. Instead, she had to say, “You both make me laugh.”

Celeste raised an eyebrow at that. “Sean makes you laugh?” The gray-haired woman turned and stared out at the lake. “Well, then. That’s certainly something, isn’t it?”

Rebecca didn’t know what to say to that. So of course,
what came out was, “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what you told me yesterday.” There was no need to clarify, but there she was doing it anyway, off on her babble train because she was nervous. “About your husband, Charlie. And how he disappeared just like Stu.”

Celeste, fortunately, didn’t seem the least bit perturbed or upset by what Rebecca had said. “Well, there were quite a few differences, actually. You and Stu were never going to get married, for one.”

Wait a minute. “How did you know that?”

Celeste laughed at that question. Actually laughed. “Oh honey, anyone with any sense at all knew that.”

“Why didn’t somebody tell me then?”

“Some things you need to figure out for yourself.”

“A manual would be much better, thanks.”

Celeste’s delighted laughter had Rebecca laughing with her again. And then the two of them were picking up piles of pebbles and throwing them willy-nilly into the water like two little kids instead of twenty-eight-and eighty-four-year-old women.

“Now that we’ve gotten that out of our systems, I’m sure you’d like a cup of tea.”

Celeste didn’t wait for Rebecca to agree as she moved down the beach to her cottage. This, right here, was the beauty of Emerald Lake. She’d come out this morning feeling out of sorts and confused. It wasn’t that she was any less confused now, but she felt lighter nonetheless for the blue sky and the beautiful lake… and a good friend.

1945, Emerald Lake Inn

Celeste waited for three days, through two more long and lonely nights for Charlie to come back.
She told no one that he was gone, knowing everyone assumed they were simply having a perfect honeymoon where they didn’t even come out of their rooms for meals.

She picked the food up outside the door at every meal, and flushed most of it down the toilet so that no one would know there was only one person left in the honeymoon suite high in the inn’s attic.

She stared out the window for hours, keeping watch for Charlie. But she needn’t have bothered.

She’d know the second he was back, would feel it deep in her soul.

Every day the room grew colder. Every night as she dozed in the chair by the window she dreamed she heard crying coming from the walls.

The sun dawned on the fourth day and it was time for her to check out of the inn, to go off and start her new life as Mrs. Charlie Murphy.

She held her head high as she carried her suitcase downstairs, as she turned in her room key. She knew people had long thought of her older sister, Evelyn, as the strong one. But Celeste had hidden reserves of strength she’d never had to tap into.

Until now.

“I’ll need to leave my things here until later,” she told the innkeeper, a lovely young girl who was fairly new to town.

The girl’s face had flushed. “Of course. Will your husband be back for them later?”

Celeste simply said, “Thank you,” before turning and heading for the door.

She walked the mile to her father’s house along the beach, but she saw little of the beauty around her, barely noticed the sun beating down on her back.

Her sister Rose saw her first. “Did you walk from the inn? Where’s Charlie?” She stepped closer. “Have you been crying?”

Celeste put her fingers to her cheek. Oh. She hadn’t known she was crying. She pushed the moisture aside.

“I need to speak with father.”

“He’s in the middle of a meeting with—”

Celeste was already moving past her sister. She’d thought the next time she walked through these doors, her husband would be beside her.

Where was he? Was he hurt?

Oh god, she prayed he wasn’t hurt.

She headed straight for her father’s study. He often took meetings in his house, rather than his office in town. In fact, the day that Charlie had come to town looking for her father, they’d ended up meeting right here.

“Father.” She’d been told her voice had a lyrical quality, that she might have been a professional singer if she’d had any interest in it. Today it was flat. “I need to speak with you.”

Three middle-aged men stood up quickly, their eyebrows moving up on their faces as they took in her clearly sleepless, tear-stained visage. Rose had been following her like a puppy but now she’d fallen back, leaving Celeste to stand all alone in the doorway to her father’s dark wood and leather office.
Smoke from the men’s pipes swirled and curled up to the ceiling.

“Gentlemen, this is my middle daughter, Celeste.” Still gracious despite her interruption, he said, “I’m in the middle of a meeting. I’ll come find you later, honey.”

She lifted her chin. “I need to speak with you right away.”

After three days in the inn’s honeymoon suite, waiting and praying and hoping for the miracle of Charlie’s reappearance, she’d decided that if her husband was, in fact, in trouble, she needed her father’s help now, not later.

“If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I’ll be back shortly.”

She could tell her father was upset by the hard set of his jaw, the tight way he was holding his shoulders.

He waited until they were out of ear shot. “You embarrassed me back there.”

“Charlie’s gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“I woke up the morning after our wedding and he had disappeared.”

“He disappeared three days ago?”

“Yes.”

“Why on earth did you take so long to tell me this?”

“I was waiting.” Her voice was soft, small.

“You were waiting.”

The sentence sounded strangled and she looked up to see myriad emotions cross her father’s face. Empathy for his daughter, disappointment, confusion.

And, finally, anger.

“I gave him my money.”

She nodded. Charlie had been about to start a new business in town.

“Have you checked the account?”

“No.”

She hadn’t thought about money. But now, she did. And she knew what her father would find when he went to speak with the bank manager.

But there was relief there, too. Because if Charlie had disappeared with her father’s money, then it was less likely that he was hurt, wasn’t it?

“Wait here.”

She knew he was going into his office, that he was rescheduling his meeting. She stood in the same place, not moving a muscle as the three men filed out of the room and out to the front door.

“Come with me, Celeste.”

He wasn’t calling her honey anymore or even Cellie. No, she was a crisp Celeste to him now.

Thirty minutes later, all was confirmed. Charlie had come into the bank the morning after their wedding and withdrawn all of the funds but one hundred dollars.

Celeste silently followed her father out of the bank and down to the public dock next to the inn. On a cool spring day, despite the bright sunshine, they were the only two people out on the lake shore.

“You should have known better.”

All of them had been taken in by Charlie, but she knew her father’s pride would never live that down.

“We don’t know why he took the money,” she said, instinctively defending her husband.

“He took it because he’s a crook.”

But Celeste knew she could have never fallen in love with a bad man. “What if he isn’t? What if he’s in trouble? What if he needs our help?”

“That money he stole from me is the last help he’ll ever get. He was a con man. You were his target.” She knew exactly why her father was acting so awful, why he was sneering at her. It was because Charlie had pulled one over on him. “The perfect innocent little target. Just as I’d worried you’d be.”

Only, although Celeste’s heart was aching, she couldn’t believe that it had all been a lie. Yes, she could accept that perhaps he might have come into their life as a con man; yes, she might have been his target, but by the time they had their wedding night, their love was real. There had to be a reason he’d left.

“We will have the marriage annulled right away,” he father decreed.

“No.” She wouldn’t allow that.

She’d never talked back to her father before. Never really stood up to him either. But something had happened to her between that first kiss with Charlie and saying I do, between lying in his arms in the inn’s honeymoon suite and waking up alone in an ice-cold room.

“I’m not a virgin anymore, father.” Her father blinked in shock at her as she continued with, “Charlie will always be my husband, even if he never comes back to me.”

Her father was silent for a long moment. “Char—” He stopped before getting her husband’s
name out, his face twisted with disgust. “Your new husband died in an unfortunate car accident.”

“What? How could you know that?” No, she’d know if he was dead.

She’d know.

“From this moment forward, that is what happened. You will move back into our house and grieve your husband for an appropriate period of time.”

Six weeks later, she threw up her breakfast. By the end of the week, her mother proclaimed it morning sickness.

Celeste was pregnant with Charlie’s baby.