Chapter 11 #2
Gideon tried to put himself between me and danger, but one big, brawny man was nothing against two angry geese. Walter came hobbling toward us, but it was too late. The lead goose bit Gideon on the thigh, and he swore.
“Run!” I screamed.
Gideon ripped his pants out of the goose’s beak, picked me up around the waist, and threw me over his shoulder. And then he ran.
By the time we tumbled between two big dunes of sand that separated the fair from the beach, I was laughing so hard there were tears streaming down my face. I lay on sand and long grass as Gideon rolled into me and leaned his forehead against my shoulder as he laughed.
“I hate geese,” I wheezed.
“I didn’t think it would attack me,” he admitted.
“Have you ever met a goose before? What else would it do?”
Gideon laughed harder, rolling onto his back in the sand. We lay there until the giggles subsided. Finally, I turned to look at him. He’d lost his sunglasses at some point, and his eyes were glimmering with humor. His smile was unguarded and bright. He was gorgeous.
We stared at each other for a long time.
I licked my lips, and Gideon followed the movement with his eyes.
Slowly, as if he was waiting for me to flinch back, Gideon reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, neatly avoiding the globs of llama spit.
His finger was warm as it traced the shell of my ear, coasting down the side of my neck and drifting away.
I ached for him to touch me again, but he just looked at me.
“Thoughts on your first Marswood Harbor Fair?” he asked.
“Ten out of ten,” I replied, and he grinned. He pushed himself to his feet and helped me up, and we did our best to brush the sand from our clothes and hair. Stumbling out from between the dunes, we nearly ran into grumpy old Ivan Popov.
The old man scowled at me and then at Gideon. “Beauty and the beast,” he sneered, and then brushed past us to limp toward the fair. I frowned after him, offended.
But it wasn’t until I looked at Gideon that I realized that little comment had overshadowed all the laughter that had come before.
His jaw was tense, and he was doing that thing where he angled his head away from me, like he didn’t want me to look at his scars.
He wore long sleeves today too, despite the beating sun, and I watched as the fingers of his right hand twitched at the left cuff to pull it down over his scarred wrist. It made me want to scream.
He met my gaze after a long pause and said, “You want to stay longer, or should I drive you home?”
The bubbly, effervescent feeling in my chest went flat. “Gideon…”
He shrugged off the hand I reached toward him, then stalked toward his car. I followed, trying to find the words to tell him that Ivan had been rude, and that wasn’t at all how I saw him.
“He’s wrong, you know,” I finally said when we reached the vehicle.
Gideon shot me a glance. “Is he, though?”
This time, he angled his head so I could see the scars.
And that pissed me off, because how did he expect me to react?
Did he think I’d run away screaming? The scars were just different-textured skin!
They didn’t change the fact that he was funny and warm and a great cook, he was reliable and beloved and respected in his family, and he had an amazing body, and his voice, and oh, God, I was falling in love with him.
My mouth clamped shut before I could reply, the horror of my realization staying my tongue.
“I need to go to work, so…”
“It’s Saturday.”
“We’ve got thousands of hours of video to review to try to find Mr. Titty.”
“Can’t a computer do that for you?”
Gideon just stared at me. “You want a ride home, or no?”
“I’ll find my own way back,” I said.
His eyes were flat. Unsurprised. “Fine,” he said. His anger—or was it hurt?—lay heavy between us. He got behind the wheel and went to close the door, then seemed to reconsider. He glanced at me and, a little more gently, he said, “Call me if you need a lift.”
I nodded and watched him drive off. Glancing back at the fair, I didn’t have the heart to go back. I did spot Gideon’s sunglasses on the ground by the dunes, so I circled back to grab them, then made my way up Main Street.
My head was a mess. I walked under the dappled shade of the big trees lining the street, barely seeing the new additions to Mr. Titty’s oeuvre. I passed boarded-up shops and the vacant apartments above, and I nodded to passers-by who greeted me by name.
As I walked, my anger grew. Anger at myself for falling for yet another unavailable man. Anger at Gideon for thinking I was so shallow. Anger at Ivan Popov for being a rude son of a bitch who couldn’t be civil for three seconds of the day.
Anger had always been a great motivator of mine.
It’s what had made me sign up for this marriage, after all.
So when I reached Life’s a Stitch and saw the “For Rent” sign still hanging in the window, it was my anger that made me pull out my phone.
I was mad when I swiped away yet another spam call from an unknown number, then typed in the phone number on the sign.
“Marswood Harbor Property Management, how may I help you?” a woman’s pleasant voice sing-songed the greeting over the phone.
“Hi, I’m calling about Life’s a Stitch. Is the space still available to rent? How much are you asking for it?”
“May I have your name?”
“Sadie Ge—Sadie Mars,” I said, and I swallowed thickly.
There was tapping on a keyboard, and then the woman said, “Life’s a Stitch is available to rent.” She named a price that was modest but still out of my budget. My heart sank. “Would you like to meet to have a look at the space?”
“I’ll have to think about it,” I said, and my anger deflated like an old balloon.
I didn’t have enough money to reopen the doors on Sadie Bridal, even in this tiny town. I’d need a serious injection of cash to be able to sustain a new location until I got a steady stream of clients. If I ever got a steady stream of clients without someone like Henry propping me up.
Maybe I just wasn’t good enough to run my own business.
Dejected, I started the long walk back to the cottage.
I waved at Mrs. Gretzinger, who was standing by the front sign of The Pier with a contractor, then continued on my way.
I passed two cars going into town, and I could tell only one of them was a local because he lifted two fingers off the steering wheel of his beat-up pickup in greeting as he passed me.
The other car was a fancy Mercedes with dark-tinted windows whose driver ignored me. An out-of-towner.
The thought made my shoulders slump. An out-of-towner like me.
Ten minutes later, a third car drove up toward me, slowed, and stopped. Gideon rolled down his window. “You were supposed to call me,” he rumbled. His expression was still guarded.
My silly heart soared at the sight of him, thumping wildly at the thought that he’d gone out of his way to come pick me up. It took so very little to make me fall for a man. I smiled. “Did the Marswood Harbor Watch call to tell you about your dereliction of duty as my husband?”
“Three phone calls and six texts about you walking down the road on your own,” he grumbled.
I laughed as I got in the car, but sadness pierced my chest. In an alternate universe, he would be my husband in truth.
I would open up to him, and he would accept me for who I was.
He would stop thinking I was going to leave as soon as our trial period was over.
He would believe me when I told him that I found him wildly attractive.
But this was real life. We had four more weeks to figure out if this was what we wanted forever. And if things kept going the way they were, I already knew my heart would break. If I stayed, I’d be married to a man I loved who didn’t love me back. If I went, I’d leave the man who had my heart.
I watched Gideon cook dinner, and then I worked on sketches of Lola’s dress to show her at Sunday lunch the following day. It was the kind of quiet evening I’d imagined when I wrote about my perfect day. But when it was time to go to bed, I went to the bedroom, and Gideon stayed on the couch.
That night, when all was quiet, I tried the dilators again. Thought of Gideon, even though I knew I shouldn’t. Dreamed of a life that involved the love of a good man, a successful business, a big family, and a cozy home. Fell asleep knowing I would never have it.
GIDEON
I should’ve thanked Ivan Popov, I realized. I’d needed a reminder that Sadie and I weren’t on the same level. But it was easy to forget when she looked at me with glittering brown eyes and lit up the room with her smile.