Chapter Thirty-Three
Andrew
This deadline was going to kick his butt.
The next time he decided to pack up and move his family eight hundred miles away when he was so close to a hard and fast deadline,
Andrew needed to tell his future self to get his ass in gear.
He had turned his phone on Do Not Disturb so that he could have an hour of uninterrupted work time, but he couldn’t seem to
make his brain cooperate. His thoughts kept going back to the evening before, to Rosie’s ravaged features as she told him
about the shocking revelations she had learned that night.
He couldn’t imagine what she must be going through. He had wanted to call or text her a dozen times that morning to see how
she was doing but hadn’t been able to think of anything that didn’t feel like hollow words of comfort.
How was she? Still reeling?
He picked up his phone again, then set it back down and forced himself to return to work. He could probably focus better if
he shut the door, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Rosie had mentioned she might be stopping by again. If she did,
he wanted to be sure not to miss her.
Somehow Andrew managed to muddle through revisions on one chapter and started working on the next when he saw a familiar Lucas
Construction truck pull up in front of the house. A moment later, she climbed out and came inside.
Andrew saved his manuscript and rose abruptly. He was due for a break anyway, wasn’t he?
He hurried down the stairs, following the sound of her voice. He found her talking to the two carpenters who were doing the final framing in the kids’ bedrooms and hanging the closet doors.
When he poked his head in, she gave him a half smile.
“Oh, hi. I’m sorry if we disturbed you.”
He decided not to tell her she had been disturbing him since he first met her in her bookstore.
“I was waiting for you. I could have shut my door and put on my noise-blocking headphones, but I was hoping to get the chance
to check on you today, if you stopped by.”
She sent a quick look at the carpenters, clearly averse to sharing her personal life with her subcontractors. He waited until
after she finished talking with them and moved out into the hallway before he gave her arm a comforting squeeze.
“How are you? Did you get any sleep at all?”
She gave a rough laugh. “Not much. Does it show?”
She had dark smudges beneath her eyes and she seemed more fragile than usual, but other than that, she still looked vibrant
and lovely.
“Not at all. That was sheer speculation on my part.” He didn’t tell her that he also had not slept well, too concerned for what she must be going through.
“Well, your speculation is spot-on. I’m not sure I slept at all. I couldn’t seem to shut everything down.”
“Understandable.”
“I spent the morning yanking out weeds, which always helps me work out my big moods. I had just settled down when Pam showed
up.”
“At your house?”
Rosie nodded, her mouth tight. “She wanted to have it out somewhere that wasn’t the office.”
“How did that go? Do you need me to help you hide a body?”
She laughed, then blinked as if surprised at the sound. “No. I wish. I wanted to sic my chickens on her, but they weren’t
cooperating. Even Alfredo, my mean rooster, stayed away.”
“Sounds like you need to train them better.”
She smiled again. “I’ll work on that. I didn’t even yell. We actually had a moderately civil conversation.”
“You’re a better person than I could be.”
“I’m really not. I planned to figure out how I could fire her, if you want the truth, but she quit before I could. I’ll admit,
I’m disappointed I didn’t get the chance to act first.”
“The end result is the same, though. You don’t have to go on working with her.”
“I suppose. Firing her would have been more cathartic but it’s done now. I did take your advice and told her to work at home
today wrapping up any exit details and take her personal leave time starting tomorrow.”
“Smart.”
“She said she had other offers and was ready to move on anyway. I’m sure she will end up working for one of my competitors.
At this point, I don’t care. I’m just relieved I don’t have to see her in the office.”
“That would have been excruciating.”
She nodded and moved to the floor-length window on the stair landing that overlooked the ocean. “She told me they were in
love but at the time of his death, their affair had been strictly emotional.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore. It doesn’t make much difference, does it? An emotional affair almost feels like more
of a betrayal than a purely physical one.”
He could see that, though he expected some men wouldn’t be able to grasp the subtle difference.
“What was he not finding from me? What was I not doing to make him feel loved and appreciated so that he had to turn to someone
else?”
The despair in her voice broke his heart and made him want to smash something. “This wasn’t about you, Rosie. Gary’s choices
were his own.”
She sighed. “It’s easy to say that, but I look back at how things were in the year before he died and we hardly saw each other.
He was working long hours at the construction company, I had bought the bookstore. And then I complicated everything by persuading
him that we had to buy this house. I added so much pressure, financial and emotional, to our marriage. How can I blame him
for turning to someone else?”
He moved closer, wishing he could take away this pain. “Unfortunately, we can’t ask him. He’s not here. Your mind can come
up with a million different reasons why he might consider turning to another woman but you can never know the truth. You don’t
need to torture yourself by trying to figure it out.”
She sighed. “I know. I need to stop. It’s not that easy.”
“You didn’t even know any of this twenty-four hours ago. It will take time to come to terms with everything.”
She nodded, giving him a tentative smile. The afternoon sun coming through the windows lit up her features and he had a tough
time looking away.
“Thank you for being a listening ear. I don’t have anyone else to talk to about this.
I can’t really discuss it with Emma and I don’t want to talk about it with my mother.
The three of you are the only ones who know and I don’t really want to tell any of my other friends that Gary was having an emotional affair with Pam when he died. ”
“Understandable.”
“You really have been amazing,” she said. “Thank you. The last thing you need right now when you’re trying to finish a book
is me spraying you with a fire hose of my emotional trauma.”
He smiled at her imagery. “I actually really appreciate the distraction.”
“The book isn’t going well?”
“It never is at this stage. This is always when I wonder what I’m doing and why I’m fooling myself to think I can ever manage
to write a book that anyone would be interested in.”
She gave him an empathetic smile. “I know it’s not at all comparable, but I feel the same way every time we take on a new
building project. I look at the architectural renderings and consider everything ahead of us and it always feels impossible.”
“Yes. That.”
“It’s not quite the same. You’re trying to come up with everything out of your own imagination. But a big project is a big
project.”
“True enough.”
“Other than my own emotional trauma, I really do think the book club went well. I’ve heard from several of my friends today
telling me how charming and approachable and kind you are. No one quite expected that.”
“Given my tough persona.”
She smiled. “Well, you do have something of a reputation for being remote and standoffish. Unless we’re talking about your
red carpet appearances with Willow Voss, anyway.”
He made a face, embarrassed at the reference to a time in his life he would prefer to forget.
“You know that whole thing was mostly made up by the tabloids, right? I went out with her a few times, that’s all.
I did like her and so did the kids but I wasn’t in the market for an ambitious actress looking for publicity and she wasn’t looking for an introverted, too-serious widower with a couple of kids. ”
“Then she’s a fool.”
Rosie immediately looked as if she wished she hadn’t said anything.
He wanted to kiss her again, right there on his second-floor landing, in the middle of hammering and power tools and chaos.
Not the time, he reminded himself.
“I should go,” she said. “I only dropped by to check on things with the carpenters.”
“I’ll walk you out. I could use some air.”
They made their way through the house that slowly seemed to be coming together. In another few weeks, the Stormhaven renovation
would be done and Andrew would no longer have her occasional drop-in visits to anticipate. It was a bittersweet prospect.
He wanted the house to be done but he didn’t want to lose this connection to her.
When they reached her pickup truck, he opened the door for her.
“I’m sorry for what you’re going through, Rosie,” he said before she climbed inside. “Don’t beat yourself up about something
you can’t change.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that. I’m sorry again that I interrupted your work.”
“Don’t be. I’ve been waiting all day for you to come by. I told myself it was mainly because I wanted to know how you were
doing after last night, but the truth is, I mostly wanted to see you.”
Andrew watched as Rosie’s eyes widened, her lips parting slightly in surprise. She seemed to struggle for words, clearly caught off guard by his candid admission. Her cheeks flushed, and he could see the uncertainty in her gaze, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.
This wasn’t the time to kiss her, he reminded himself. She was struggling with this personal crisis and didn’t need more complications.
But he seemed powerless to resist. Before he could second-guess himself, Andrew leaned in, gently cupping her face with one
hand.
Their lips met, and suddenly the world around them and all his rationalizations faded away. The kiss was tender at first,
almost hesitant, but it quickly deepened as all of his pent-up attraction and longing poured out.
Andrew felt a surge of emotions he hadn’t experienced in what felt like forever. The softness of Rosie’s lips, the warmth
of her body as she pressed closer, it all ignited a fire within him that he thought had long since burned out. He wanted more—so
much more. He longed to pull her even closer, to explore every inch of her, to show her how much she meant to him.
As the kiss intensified, Andrew’s mind raced with possibilities.
Sometimes his overactive imagination offered both perks and drawbacks.
He could too easily imagine lazy Sunday mornings spent tangled in sheets, stolen afternoons when she distracted him from his
work or he visited her on jobsites, building a rich, beautiful, rewarding life here in Wood Briar together.
For now, he wanted to lose himself in the softness of her mouth and the intoxicating heat they seemed to generate together
without even trying.