Reunion on Rocky Shores Page 14

  “You’re an elementary school teacher,” Anna said with a confident grin. “You’re good at making your students do things they don’t want to do, aren’t you?”

  Julia snorted. “I have a feeling Will Garrett might be just a tad harder to manage than my fifth-grade boys.”

  “We all have complete faith in you,” Sage said.

  Before she was quite aware of how they had managed it, they ushered her and Conan out the front door and closed it behind her. She was quite surprised when she didn’t hear the click of the door locking behind her. She wouldn’t have put anything past them at this point.

  Conan strained on his leash to be gone but she stood on the porch steps of Brambleberry House trying to gather her frayed nerves as she listened to the distant crash of the sea and the cool October breeze moaning in the tops of the pines.

  Finally she couldn’t ignore Conan’s urgency and she followed the walkway around the house to the gate that opened to the beach.

  It would probably be a quicker route to just take the road to his house but she wasn’t in a huge hurry to face him anyway.

  Conan seemed less insistent as they walked along the shoreline, after he had marked just about every single rock and tuft of grass they passed.

  It gave her time to remember her last summer on Cannon Beach. She passed the rock where she had been sitting when he kissed her for the last time—not counting more recent incidences—the night before she left Cannon Beach when she was fifteen.

  She paused and ran her finger along the uneven surface, remembering the thrill of his arms around her and how she had been so very certain she had to be in love with him.

  She’d had nothing to compare it to, but she had been quite sure at fifteen that this must be the real thing.

  And then the next day her world had shattered and she had been shuttled to Sacramento with her mother, away from everything safe and secure in her life.

  Still, even as her parents’ marriage had imploded, she had held the memory of a handsome boy close to her heart.

  At first she thought the moisture on her cheeks was just sea spray, then she realized it was tears, that she was crying for lost innocence and for the two people they had been, and for all the pain that had come after for both of them.

  She wiped at her cheeks as she knelt and hugged Conan to her. The dog licked at her cheeks and she smiled a little at his attempts to comfort her.

  “I’m being silly again, aren’t I? I’m not fifteen anymore and I’m not that dreamy-eyed girl. I’m thirty-one years old and I need to start acting like it, don’t I?”

  The dog barked as if he agreed with her.

  With renewed resolve, she squared her shoulders and stood again, gathering her courage around her.

  She had to do this. Will’s life was here in Cannon Beach. It had always been here, and she couldn’t ruin that for him.

  She swallowed her nerves and headed for the lights she could see flickering in his workshop.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  He would miss this.

  Will stood in his father’s workshop—his workspace now, at least for another few days—and routered the edge of a shingle while a blues station played on the stereo.

  He had always found comfort within these walls, with the air sweet with freshly cut wood shavings and sawdust motes drifting in the air, catching the light like gold flakes.

  He left the door ajar, both for ventilation and to let the cool, moist sea air inside. In the quiet intervals without the whine and hum of his power tools, he could hear the ocean’s low murmur just down the beach.

  This was his favorite spot in the world, the place where he had learned his craft, where he had forged a connection with his stern, sometimes austere father, where he had figured out many of his own strengths and his weaknesses.

  Before Robin and Cara died, he used to come out here so he could have a quiet place to think. Sage probably would have given it some hippy new age name like a transcendental meditation room or something.

  He just always considered it the one place where his thoughts seemed more clear and cohesive.

  He didn’t so much need a place to think these days as he needed an escape on the nights when the house seemed too full of ghosts to hold anyone still breathing.

  In a few days when he started working for Eben Spencer’s company, everything would be different. He expected his workspaces for the next few months would be any spare corner he could find in whatever hotel around the globe where Eben sent him to work.

  Who would have ever expected him to become an itinerant carpenter? Have tools, will travel.

  His first job was outside of Boston but Eben wanted to send him to Madrid next and then on to Portofino, Italy before he headed to the Pacific Rim. And that was only the first month.

  Will shook his head. Italy and Spain and Singapore. What the hell was he going to do in a foreign country where he didn’t know a soul and didn’t speak the language?

  It all seemed wildly exotic for a guy who rarely left his coastal hometown, who only possessed a current passport because he and Robin had gone on a cruise to Mexico the year before Cara came along.

  The work would be the same. That was the important thing. He would still be doing the one thing he was good at, the one thing that filled him with satisfaction, whether he was in Portofino or Madrid or wherever else Eben sent him.

  Maybe those ghosts might even have a chance to rest if he wasn’t here dredging them up every minute.

  He sure hoped he was making the right choice.

  He set down the finished shingle and picked up another one from the dwindling pile next to him. Only a few more and then he only had to nail them to the roof to be finished. A few more hours of work ought to do it.

  Against his will, he shot another glance out the window at the big house on the hill, solid and graceful against the moonlit sky.

  The lights were out on the second floor, he noted immediately, then chided himself for even noticing.

  He was almost certain he wasn’t really trying to outrun any ghosts by taking the job with Spencer Hotels. But he knew he couldn’t say the same for the living woman who haunted him.

  He sighed as his thoughts inevitably slid back to Julia, as they had done so often the last two weeks. Tonight was Sage’s bridal shower, he knew. He had seen cars coming and going all night.

  Julia was probably right in the middle of it all, with her sweet smile and the sunshine she seemed to carry with her into every room.

  For a man who wanted to push her away, he sure spent a hell of a lot of time thinking about her. He sighed again, and could almost swear he smelled the cherry blossom scent of her on the wind.

  But a moment later, when the router was silent as he picked up another shingle, he thought he heard a snuffling kind of noise outside the door, then a dark red nose poked through.

  An instant later, Conan was barking a greeting at him and Julia was walking through the doorway behind him.

  Will yanked up his safety glasses and could do nothing but stare at her, wondering how his thoughts had possibly conjured her up.

  Her cheeks were flushed, her hair tousled a little by the wind, but she was definitely flesh and blood.

  “Hi,” she murmured, and he was certain her color climbed a little higher on her cheeks.

  She looked fragile and lovely and highly uncomfortable. No wonder, after the things he had said to her the last time they had spoken.

  “I’m sorry to bother you…I…we…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Wasn’t tonight Sage’s big bridal shower?”

  “It was. But it’s over now and everyone’s gone. After the shower, Conan needed a walk and he picked me to take him and Sage and Anna made me come down here to talk to you.”

  She finished in a rush, without meeting his gaze.

  “They made you?”

  Her gaze finally flashed to his and he saw a combination of chagrin and rueful acceptance. “You know what they’re like. I have a t
ough enough time saying no to them individually. When they combine forces, I’m pretty much helpless to resist.”

  “Why did they want you to talk to me?” he asked, though he had a pretty strong inkling.

  She didn’t answer him, though, only moved past him into the workshop, her attention suddenly caught by the project he was working on.

  Damn it.

  He could feel his own cheeks start to flush and wished, more than anything, that he had had the foresight to grab a tarp to cover the thing the minute she walked in.

  “Will,” she exclaimed. “It’s gorgeous!”

  He scratched the back of his neck, doing his best to ignore how the breathy excitement in her voice sent a shiver rippling down his spine. “It’s not finished. I’m working on the shingles tonight, then I should be ready to take it back up to Brambleberry House.”

  She moved forward for a closer look and he couldn’t seem to wrench his gaze away from her starry-eyed delight at the repaired dollhouse he had agreed to work on the day she moved in.

  “It’s absolutely stunning!”

  She drew her finger along the curve of one of the cupola’s with tender care. Will could only watch, grimly aware that he shouldn’t have such an instant reaction just from the sight of her soft, delicate hands on his work.

  “You fixed it! No, you didn’t just fix it. This is beyond a simple repair. It was such a mess, just a pile of broken sticks, when you started! And from that, you’ve created a work of art!”

  “I don’t know that I’d go quite that far.”

  “I would! Oh, Will, it’s beautiful. Better than it ever was, even when it was new from my father.”

  To his horror, tears started to well up in her eyes.

  “It’s just a dollhouse. Not worth bawling about,” he said tersely, trying to keep the sudden panic out of his voice.

  She gave a short laugh as she swiped at her cheeks. “They’re happy tears. Oh, believe me. Will, it’s wonderful. I can’t tell you how much this will mean to Maddie. She tried to be brave about it but she was so heartbroken when I told her the dollhouse hadn’t survived the move. It was one of her last few ties to her father and she has always cherished it, I think because he gave it to her right after her diagnosis, a few days before he…”

  Her voice trailed off for a moment and he thought she wasn’t going to complete the sentence, but then she drew in a breath and straightened her shoulders. “Before he left us.”

  Will stared at her, trying to make sense of her words. “I didn’t realize your husband died so soon after Maddie’s cancer was discovered.”

  She sighed. “He didn’t,” she said slowly. “His car accident was eighteen months after her diagnosis but…we were separated most of that time. We were a few months shy of finalizing our divorce when he died.”

  She lifted her chin almost defiantly when she spoke the last part of the sentence.

  He wondered at it, even as he tried to figure out how the hell a man with a beautiful wife and two kids—one with cancer—could walk away from his family in the middle of a crisis.

  He left us, she had said quite plainly. He didn’t miss the meaning of that now. The man had a daughter with cancer and he had been the one to walk away from them.

  Will had a sudden fierce wish that he could have met her husband just once before he died, to teach the bastard a lesson about what it meant to be a man.

  She was waiting for him to answer, he realized.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally said, wincing at the inane words. “That must have been hard on you and the kids during such a rough time.”

  She managed a wobbly smile. “You could say that.”

  “All this time, you never said anything about your marriage. I had no idea it was rocky.”

  She sighed and leaned against the work table holding the resurrected dollhouse.

  “I don’t talk about it much, especially when the kids are around. I don’t want them thinking less of their father.”

  He raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing. He had his own opinions about it but he didn’t think she would be eager to hear them.

  “Maddie’s diagnosis kicked Kevin in the gut. The stark truth is, he just couldn’t handle it. His mother died of cancer when he was young, a particularly vicious form that lingered for a long time, and I think he just couldn’t bear the thought that he might lose someone else he loved in the same way.”

  What kind of strength had it taken her to deal with a crumbling marriage at the same time she was fighting for her daughter’s life? He couldn’t even imagine it.

  He studied her there in his workshop and saw shadows in her eyes. There was more to the story, he sensed.

  “Was there someone else?” Some instinct prompted him to ask.

  She gave him a swift, shocked look. “How did you know that? I haven’t told anyone else. Not even Sage and Anna know that part.”

  “I don’t know. Just a guess.” He couldn’t very well tell her he was becoming better than he ought to be at reading her thoughts in her lovely green eyes.

  She sighed, tracing a finger over one of the arched windows on the dollhouse. “A coworker. He swore he only turned to her after we separated—after Maddy’s diagnosis—because he was hurting so much inside and so afraid for the future.”

  “That doesn’t take away much of the sting for you, I imagine.”

  “No. No, it doesn’t. I was angry and bitter for a long time. I mean, I was the one dealing with appointments and sitting through Maddie’s chemotherapy with her and holding her when she threw up for hours afterward. I was scared, too. Not scared, I was terrified. I used to check on her dozens of times a night, just to make sure she was still breathing. I still do when she’s having a rough night. It was a miracle I could function, most days. I was just as scared, but I didn’t turn to someone else. I toughed it out by myself because I had no choice.”

  He couldn’t imagine such a betrayal—more than that, he couldn’t understand why she could seem to be such a happy person now after what she had been through.

  Most women he knew would be bitter and angry at the world after surviving such an ordeal but Julia seemed to bubble over with joy, finding delight in everything.

  She had been over the moon that he had repaired a dollhouse her bastard of an almost-ex-husband had worked on. He figured most betrayed women would have smashed the dollhouse to pieces themselves out of spite so they wouldn’t have one more reminder of their cheating spouse.

  “I don’t know why I told you all that,” she said after a moment, her cheeks slightly pink. “I didn’t come here to relive the past.”

  Since she seemed eager to change the subject, he decided he wouldn’t push her.

  “That’s right,” he answered. “Sage and Anna sent you.”

  “I would have come anyway,” she admitted. “They just gave me a push in this direction.”

  He found that slightly hard to believe, given his rudeness the last time they met.

  “Why?” he asked.

  She let out a breath, then confirmed his suspicion. “I…Sage just found out from Eben tonight that you’re leaving.”

  He picked up another shingle, stalling for time. He did not want to get into this, especially not with her, though he had been half-expecting something like this for two weeks, since he accepted Eben’s offer.

  “That’s right,” he finally said. It would have been rude to turn the router on again—not to mention, Conan wouldn’t like it—but he was severely tempted, if only to cut her off.

  She seemed to have become inordinately fascinated with one of the finials on the dollhouse.

  “I know this is presumptuous and I have no real right to ask…”

  Her voice trailed off and he sighed, yanking his safety glasses off his head and setting them aside. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to be finishing the dollhouse anytime soon.

  “Something tells me you’re going to ask anyway.”

  She twisted her hands together, her color st
ill high. “You love Cannon Beach, Will. I know you do.”

  “Yeah. I do love it here. I always have.”

  “Help me understand, then, why you would suddenly decide to leave the town you have lived in for thirty-two years. This is your home. You have friends here, a thriving business. Your whole life is here!”

  “What life?”

  He hadn’t meant to say something that raw, that honest, but his words seemed to hang between them and he couldn’t yank them back.

  It was the truth, anyway.

  He didn’t have a life, or at least not much of one. Everything he had known and cared about was gone and he couldn’t walk anywhere in Cannon Beach without stumbling over a memory of a time when he thought he had owned the world, when he was certain he had everything he could ever possibly want.

  Since Julia came to town, everything seemed so much harder, his world so much emptier—something else he wasn’t about to explain to her.

  Her eyes were dark with sorrow and something else that looked suspiciously like guilt.

  “Maybe I was ready for a change,” he finally said. “You just said it yourself, I’ve lived here my entire life. That’s pretty pathetic for a grown man to admit, that he’s never been anywhere, never done anything. Eben offered me the job some time ago. I gave it a lot of thought and finally decided the time was right.”

  She didn’t look convinced. After another long, awkward moment, she clenched her hands together and lifted her gaze to his, her mouth trembling slightly.

  “Will you tell me the truth? Are you leaving because of me?”

  He shifted his gaze away, wishing his hands were busy with the router again. Unfortunately, his gaze collided with Conan’s, and the dog gave him an entirely too perceptive look.

  “Why would you say that?” he stalled.

  She stepped closer, looking again as if she wanted to weep. “I’ve been sick inside ever since Sage told me you were taking this job with Eben’s company.”

  “You shouldn’t be, Julia. This is not on you. Let it go.”