Chapter 9
R ae was on close approach to Emma’s home when Holden Geller finally called.
She knew a momentary urge to send him to voice-mail. Either that or answer and give the man her courtroom voice, Not now .
Instead, she wheeled around and headed back to her car. But not before Emma’s neighbor staffing the bookstore spotted Rae and waved. She stepped under the live oak shading her car to answer, “Holden, hi.”
“Rae, you don’t know how many times I’ve started to call. But I’ve always been halted by simply not knowing what to say.”
It felt so very good to hear the man’s voice.
She was tempted to finally release her tears.
But Holden’s tone also carried that dread note, the same indecision she had spotted in his gaze.
Back on that fateful night, when she had scripted her terms in the starry night.
Only now did she fully realize what had set her off.
Being in the company of a man who couldn’t draw the necessary steps into proper focus.
And commit. Put his future on the line. Holden’s wavering attitude brought everything into a terrible ragged clarity.
“Rae?”
She was struck by a sudden memory. Age eleven, the summer she had met Curtis Gage, a tropical storm hit Atlantic Beach dead-on.
This not-quite-hurricane had stripped roofs and pushed inland waters hard enough to shove any number of smaller craft over the Beaufort docks and onto dry land.
It had also downed a power line directly in front of her home.
Rae had stood in her front yard, half-sheltered behind Curtis, and watched the cable hiss and writhe as it threw off a vicious stream of electric fire. To her mind, it was a living thing, a force that threatened her world. No dead element could hold such fury.
That was exactly how she felt.
“Have I lost—?”
She cut in with, “I want to apologize.”
“You? Rae, for what?”
“I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I did the last time we were together.
And I’m sorry that it’s about to happen all over again.
But today has been awful. I’ve spent all day arguing in court, and I lost my case.
I knew going in I didn’t have any chance of winning, but I held out hope for a better resolution.
It didn’t happen. And now I’m about to face something even worse.
” She paused for a breath big enough to ease the heart’s ache.
Then she expelled. All of it. Air and words both.
“I care for you very deeply. I could so easily fall in love with you.”
“Rae, I’m hearing the words, but your tone, it’s saying—”
“Your job is to be quiet and pay attention. Especially since this could very well be the last conversation you and I ever have.”
A heavy pause. Then, “I don’t understand.”
“No, you don’t. But that’s not the issue.
Well, I suppose it is in a way.” Rae spotted the neighbor stepping from the bookshop and starting toward her.
The woman positively thrived on gossip. Rae chopped the air so violently the woman froze.
Rae stalked over to where the oak stood between them.
“Listen very carefully. I can’t be with you.
So long as you keep wavering, our time together is finished.
You know what needs doing. Either you accept the need to move beyond your comfort zone or there’s nothing further for us to discuss. ”
For once, Holden’s tone matched her own. “Accept your terms, or else.”
Rae did not give one inch. “And that is our problem in a nutshell. So long as you see them as terms , as an ultimatum , we don’t have any chance of making a future together.”
“That’s exactly what you’ve done,” he retorted, his voice a blade now. “Dictated next steps.”
“Same answer.” She both hated her tone and knew it was for the best. “I told you to listen, Holden. Not hear the words. Listen . Because there is a second way you could see these two conversations. That of us learning what it means to go through life as lovers and friends both, becoming a team strong enough to weather whatever comes our way. That’s what I’ve been hoping you would take away from our last conversation.
That I talked as I did, hoping to lay out steps you know in your heart are what you should do.
If you would just accept the need to grow beyond where you are, realize I am helping you map out a clear path forward … ”
She was finished. She wished for something more, something better. But just then all she could think about was how she had failed at the love thing. Again.
“Goodbye, Holden.” She cut the connection, clutched the phone with both hands, and stood staring across Emma’s lawn.
The guest cottages formed a half circle around the back garden, lovely as wooden seashells.
They fronted an emerald lawn and then a living boundary of blooming magnolia, dogwood, and coastal pine and live oak.
Except what Rae saw was a gilded cage, shaped by all her wrong moves and failed loves.
She found herself mourning the life that might well never be hers. A lovely place filled with the good and the dreadful, the bliss and the pain, the everyday and the uncommon events, all knitted into a proper life because she had someone with whom it all might be shared.
If only.
As Rae entered Emma’s home, she felt as if she was shifting from one existence to another.
The dreary hours spent without any hint of a lifelong love belonged to someone else.
The absence of a man willing to commit, a dearth of romantic options, the anger she’d felt over Holden’s morose hesitation, all this had no place in Emma’s home.
Ever since her own mother passed, Emma had played the dual role of caring relative and island of calm.
Now, though, Emma was the one who needed her to be strong.
When she climbed the front steps, all her other problems simply remained in the front garden. Sulking and glum without her.
The neighbor staffing Emma’s bookstore was so incensed by Rae’s stiff-armed dismissal, she actually sniffed in response to Rae’s quiet hello.
Rae breathed the wonderful odors of books and paper and ink and stories ready to unfold.
A perfume that had filled her early years and offered solace for every young wound.
When she was as ready as she could be, she opened the rear door, entered the home’s central corridor, and froze.
Up ahead was a man’s voice. Deep and resonant and strong.
Brody’s voice.
Rae remained where she was, one step inside Emma’s private space.
Quiet as she could, she pulled the bookstore’s door shut.
She was certain the voice came from Emma’s bedroom, a chamber that had always been off-limits.
Rae thought Brody was reading, she vaguely recognized the words, cadence, something.
The voice lifted her spirits, reignited her smile, released her chest to take a free breath. It sounded that good.
She made sure her footsteps created enough noise to alert them both. When she appeared in Emma’s doorway, she became captured anew by the sight of her aunt. Smiling.
Rae pretended all was normal. She offered Brody a smile of her own. “Well, hello, stranger.”
“Sorry, dear, this one’s taken.” Emma then told Brody, “You don’t want her, anyway. She’s too bony and opinionated.”
Rae only half pretended at outrage. “I beg your pardon.”
Brody continued to aim his smile at Rae as he replied, “It so happens I like opinions.”
“They have their place, I suppose,” Emma agreed, then lifted one hand from the covers and waved in the direction of her rear garden. “Only not in here.”
Rae was ready with the comeback, several in fact. But Brody’s expression kept her silent, because beyond that man’s smile was a whole world of emotions. Brody had brought his own burdens in here, Rae was certain of that. And something else.
She leaned against the doorway, pretending at a casual attitude. Smiled back. And studied this handsome man.
Brody’s steady gaze was framed by features weathered and tanned by years of hard winds and sun.
Rae felt as if she developed a snapshot that would last for years.
Longer. His hair was neatly trimmed, his body strong and settled as a watchful cat.
Brody met her with a steady unblinking gaze.
A man this gorgeous defined danger in the romance department, as she well knew.
Yet there was something else at work here.
A change so deep Rae was studied a different individual.
Brody’s eyes held a message she would never, ever have expected to see. Not from this man.
Brody Reames was interested in more than simply hiring himself a local attorney. That much was abundantly clear.
Emma caught it, too. “How nice.”
Rae felt as if her aunt’s words were pulling her back from an hours-long dream. She pretended at a casual attitude and said, “Maybe I should leave and come back when I’m welcome.”
“Don’t be silly,” Emma said. “Fetch a chair from the kitchen and join us.”
For a woman whose home contained so many public spaces—library in front, guest bungalows behind—Emma had always treated her bedroom as strictly private. As she entered the kitchen and picked up her usual chair, Rae heard Brody say, “For the record, I also happen to like bones in my lady.”
Rae returned down the central corridor to the amazing sound of Emma’s quiet chuckle. The first in weeks. Which was why Rae drifted more than walked, carrying a hardbacked chair that had suddenly become light as a feather.
She settled the chair, then herself, and asked Brody, “What are you reading?”
“O. Henry’s ‘Gift of the Magi.’?” Brody rolled his eyes.
“Stop that,” Emma demanded. “You love it. Not as much as I do. But close.”
“A guy sells his watch, a girl cuts her hair,” Brody said, smiling at Rae. “So what?”
“Come closer and I’ll give you what.” Emma pointed at him and told Rae, “This oh-so-tough sailor lad teared up.”