Chapter Two #2
“No, no,” my mom says a little too quickly. “You’ll sort things out, and you won’t be there long, though I still can’t believe you gave up tenure. Seems like an awfully big risk.”
“Yes, but worth it if I find a position where I feel valued,” I tell her.
“It’s a job, Philippa. Not a daily group hug. No workplace is perfect.”
“I’m not looking for perfect. Just . . . better. It’s not an impossible ask.”
“Maybe not impossible,” my dad says, and I can’t help wishing he didn’t.
“Well, you know best,” my mom says in a way that implies I know nothing of the sort. “We’ll let you settle in, but call us if you need anything, and I’ll send you Louisa’s registration, so you don’t show up to her engagement party empty-handed.”
“You mean her gift registration?” I ask. “Aren’t gifts for the actual wedding?”
“Oh, sweetie.” My mom laughs softly. “Buy her a ladle or a dish towel. Something you can slap a bow on that won’t break your budget. You know we’re all just glad you’ll be there.”
I exhale slowly, releasing tension. I do know my family wants me around. I just wish they wanted me around without making me feel like they want a different version of me instead.
We say goodbye and hang up. I take another look at the house, bracing myself to step inside. Then I clumsily drag my heavy suitcases over bumpy, overgrown paving stones and up two dozen uneven steps toward the front porch, pep-talking myself as I go.
“This will be fine. It’ll be great. A little yard work. Some intense clean—”
“Philippa Flynn?” The voice that reaches me from the house is deep, gravelly, but not in a grumpy-old-man way.
In a resonant, please-say-my-name-again way.
Then I have one of those camera-pauses-world-goes-still kind of moments, because I look up to see a man standing by the open front door, but he’s not the man I showed Amelia a month ago on my laptop screen.
He’s Zane Scarlett, the swashbuckling pirate king from my grandmother’s novels.
Literally. The goddamned pirate king. On my doorstep. Saying my name.
Admittedly, he’s not in his usual attire: impossibly tight breeches, thigh-high cavalier boots, a glinting sword buckled by his side, and his shirt conveniently off so he can display his chiseled pecs and ravish a fiery heroine with greater haste.
He’s in an illegible print T-shirt and rumpled jeans that sit low on his hips.
His ponytail is gone, leaving his black hair curling lazily over his forehead and short on the back and sides, with a light scruff where a tidy beard usually covers his chin.
He’s older, around forty, maybe, with hints of gray in his hair and faint lines bracketing his eyes and lips, and he’s softer, as though the sculptor set aside the chisel and let time erode the sharpest angles.
But even without the sword, the ponytail, and the razor-edge jawline, he’s definitely the guy I’ve seen on thirty-four romance novel covers.
Dark, heavily lashed eyes. A hawkish nose and prominent Adam’s apple.
Full lips I’ve seen pressed against many a heaving bosom.
Also, the man can seriously fill up a doorway. His shoulders must be—
“You are Philippa Flynn?” he presses. His accent’s American, even though Zane Scarlett is British. And fictional. And clearly, I should’ve eaten more than airplane pretzels today.
“I am,” I say. “And you’re . . . ?”
“Dylan Sterling.”
“No, you’re not.”
He chokes out half a laugh. “And you know this because . . . ?”
“Because I googled you. Or, I mean, I googled Dylan Sterling. Old guy. White hair. Horn-rimmed glasses. Fond of cardigans. Unlikely to win the Smile of the Year Award.”
This time he harrumphs, and it’s precisely the harrumph I’ve always imagined.
“Wrong Dylan Sterling?” I guess.
He raises a brow, looking deeply unimpressed with my deductive reasoning.
Then he trudges down the porch steps, picks up my suitcases—one in each hand—and with no display of effort whatsoever, carries them up the stairs and pauses in the doorway, casting me an over-the-shoulder glance that suggests I should stop dawdling in the yard, gaping as though I’ve just seen a very famous, very not-real pirate greeting me in faded jeans from my doorstep.
My mind is buzzing with questions, but Zane/Dylan’s impatient expression suggests any questions will have to wait—or possibly never be asked at all—so I head inside, following him up the stairs and into the second-floor bedroom I used as a kid.
A powerful wave of nostalgia washes over me as I take in the pink striped floral wallpaper that’s peeling at the edges and the dotted Swiss curtains running from floor to ceiling, tied back and no longer bright white.
Dark maple furniture matches several heavy picture frames on the wall behind the headboard, each frame holding a family photo that jogs another memory.
Sailing. Snowball fights. Wildflower crowns.
Lemonade. The wood floor is desperate for a scrub, and the entire room is dusty and dim in the evening light, but the bed looks freshly made, with crisp white sheets neatly folded over the top edge of a fluffy, pale-blue duvet that has replaced the ancient quilt I used to sleep under.
“I figured this room,” Dylan says, thus far proving himself to be as sparing with his words in person as he was in his emails.
When I frown in confusion at his vague half statement, he nods at a cluster of embroidery-floss friendship bracelets that ring one of the bedposts.
I made them the summer I turned sixteen, even though I didn’t have anyone to give them to.
“Right, of course,” I say. “This room’s great. And thanks for picking up new bedding. I’ll reimburse you. Or buy extra groceries or whatever feels like a reasonable exchange.”
“No need. Least I could do.”
“Well, thank you,” I say. “And I’ll still cover some groceries. Or make you dinner one night. Or both. We can start a list of things to pick up and pin it to the fridge or somewhere else we can both easily add to it so if either of us is heading into town—”
“I’ve been using the east room on the third floor,” he interjects. “That okay?”
I reel at the interruption. Maybe I was babbling, but still . . .
“Of course. It’s fine. Like I said in my email, I’ll try to stay out of your way.”
He tips his chin in a way that might mean thanks, okay, or please let this be the last conversation I ever have to have with this woman. Whatever it means, this conversation appears to be over because he steps past me and into the hall, though he turns around in the doorway.
“One question,” he says.
I attempt a friendly smile. “Sure. Anything.”
“Are you here to sell it?”
“The house?”
His brows lift. His only reply.
Okay, yes, obviously the house. What else would he be asking about?
“No,” I say. “I have no plans to sell the house. I just need a place to stay until I figure out what I want to do with my life. And yes, I realize I should probably know by now, and I did know for a while, but things didn’t work out the way I thought they would, so now I don’t.”
He replies with a barely discernible nod, one I might interpret as dismissive, but his gaze remains steady, as though this time, if I chose to say more, he wouldn’t interrupt.
“Can I ask you a question?” I ask.
Another barely there nod, but one that’s much easier to interpret.
“Why do you look exactly like Zane Scarlett from my grandmother’s romance novels?”
His inky brows rise with surprise. “She never told you?”
I choke out a laugh. “That she magically ripped you from the pages of her stories?”
“That I modeled for the covers. It was how we got to know each other. By the time she needed someone to help with her books, we were pretty good friends.”
I feel my eyes go wide with surprise, though I’m not sure what surprises me more, that my bubbly, chatty grandmother was friends with a conversationally minimalist male model less than half her age or that of all the people she could hire to assist with her work and help write her series, a guy who looked good in tight pants and tanning spray was the way to go.
“She only ever referred to you as ‘the writer,’” I tell him. “And only in those last years.”
Another nod, a slow one, like he’s taking this in and maybe even pleased by it.
I set a hand on the bedpost. He shoves his hands into his pockets.
I shift. He shuffles. The silence between us grows agonizing as awkwardness radiates off both of us like the bad perfume drugstores make people walk through before we can buy tampons or toothpaste.
One of us should say something, but I have no clue what that something should be.
“There’s leftover pasta,” he says, thank god. “Clean towels in the bathroom.” He tips his chin toward the far end of the hallway. “I’m not sure what, I didn’t know if, sorry about the . . .” He shifts his stance as his shoulders inch up. “People. Not my strength.”
I melt a little at that. Not being good with people is something I understand well.
“Let me guess. As a writer, you’re better with words?” I suggest.
His shoulders drop, and his lips press together as he draws in a breath.
“I was,” he says. “Once.”
And with that, he walks away, leaving me with my luggage, my memories, and a boatload of questions I suspect I’ll never have the chance or the nerve to ask.