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Beth won’t be able to ignore the noise or barbecue scents drifting over to her side. Or the people for that matter. Bill didn’t hide his joy on seeing Beth again and May will be like a bloodhound sniffing out where she’s staying. Beth could try to ignore the Logan and Brodie clan, but I doubt any of them will ignore her.
“I’m picking up our puppy in Montpelier. A golden retriever. He’s already ten weeks old.” Raiden smiles. “But not a word, okay? Georgiana doesn’t know and… w-well… I really want to surprise her.”
“What’s that?” I ask, not sure I heard right.
“I’m getting a puppy for Georgiana. For us, actually.”
Great. Raiden’s getting a dog. Making a home. With the woman he loves.
Why on earth do I feel like throwing myself to the floor in a tantrum as if I’m three and just got told I can’t have anything my heart desires ever again?
That feeling dispels about as fast as it ballooned in me as I glance around the table, only to be filled with dread. It doesn’t matter what I do, how clean I play this, or how straight and narrow the road I want to take is, this lot is going to screw it up for me.
And delight in every moment.
13
BETH
I plonk my groceries down on the kitchen counter and dig out the bottle of red I bought. As I rummage through the drawers to find a corkscrew, I string a fine collection of expletives together. If this afternoon was an indication of how my vacation is going to go, I’m not going to like it.
That’s the thing with the office. It’s so predictable, and this trip is turning out to be unpredictable. Brenda was almost oily in the way she wanted to grease this deal to make me sign something so that she can cash in. Simon Moore’s teary wife tried to keep herself together as her three kids—all under the age of six by the look of them—cowered around her legs as we toured the homey house, invading her privacy.
This is the one thing nobody speaks about. Selling the farm for development will kick this family out of their home and uproot those gorgeous kids. My heart squeezes as I recall their faces and expressions, initially sweet and shy, then inquisitive. The one little girl was adamant she needed to show me her dolls and that part of me which I’ve been suppressing for years now bubbled up out of nowhere. I spent fifteen minutes on the floor going through her Barbie collection, most of them old hand-me-downs. It was like going back in time.
The cork pops and I shoot a thank you Lord to the ceiling. Simon will need to find a job somewhere else and the whole situation reeks of something I’ve been through and didn’t find pleasant at all. Traumatic, even, if I’m honest.
I pour myself a generous glass of wine, grab a bag of chips for dinner because it’s one of those days, and head out to the deck. The sun is setting and the fall leaves seem to catch on fire in its last rays. It’s quiet out here, so peaceful that I settle in a deck chair and close my eyes. Breathe. Sip. Breathe.
Tears are running down my cheeks before I can check them. Not that I care to check them. My heart has been broken for sixteen years and every botched attempt to patch the cracks just made them harder to heal.
After our tour of the farmstead and another perfunctory glance into another barn, Brenda and I headed out to the cottage where I spent most of my childhood. It was boarded up, hidden by the overgrown trees, left to decay. Nobody lived there ever again, apparently, as Lady Collingwood refused to let it out even to legitimate tenants. Sixteen years later there’s nothing to salvage. It could be bulldozed in minutes.
Kyle was right in dealing with all of this in a cold-hearted, distanced way. Leave the past in the past. Half of me wants to phone him and let him know that he was right, that I was an idiot to come here and see what a ruin our former warm home has turned into. But my emotions sit too close to the surface for a call, and I need time to digest.
I can’t even message Kyle because now that I’m here, San Francisco seems very, very far away, and for the first time I fully understand what I’d expected Hunter to do, and it sits kind of heavy on my conscience. I’d expected him to be uprooted as I’d been.
With a sniff I wipe at the run from my nose with a tissue and take another deep sip of wine. It’s getting cooler and with the sun gone, a cold blanket settles over the lake. Here and there patches of fog rise up from the water.
I hadn’t bothered to switch on any lights, so when the outside lights at the house next door go on, I notice them immediately. It’s only twenty-odd yards from my deck to the mansion’s, and as a man walks out onto the deck, my breathing stalls. Surely one glass of wine down and I’m not drunk yet? So drunk that I’m seeing things here.
I’m seeing Hunter Logan.
I blink.
God yes. It’s Hunter in what looks like a wetsuit and he’s striding towards the canoe rack, oblivious to my presence mere yards from him. I watch as he heaves up a giant paddleboard and slips it into the water. He seems to be wearing waterproof boots of sorts, and with perfect balance steps up on the board. One push off the edge and he glides off in the opposite direction, his paddle slicing through the low moon’s silver sparkle on the water.
Hunter is my wacky neighbor and he’s off to paddle in the dark again.
There are things I don’t need to know. Like that he still does this, more as a cure than a sport. Things I don’t need to see. Hunter’s fine ass and long muscular legs hugged in neoprene like a second skin. I groan and drink deep.
Huddled into my puffy jacket and with its hood now over my head, I wait, warmed by the wine. I don’t move except for my hand that raises the wineglass and chips to my lips. It’s a whole forty minutes later that the rhythmic cut of a paddle slicing through the water drifts over to me. It’s dark now, except in the moonlight I can see Hunter’s frame etched out against the ink black of the lake, the ripples his paddle make reflecting the moonlight like little mirrors.
He glances up and his gaze homes in on me as if I’m a beacon of light. As he steers closer to my deck, which extends probably a yard over the water, he slows down. “You’re not too chilly out here?”
I lift the bottle of wine, now half empty, in mock cheer. “I’m good.” How the hell is it that we are neighbors? Everything I wanted to avoid is right on my doorstep. And he knew that I’m staying here. That much is obvious.
Hunter chuckles and pulls up right to my deck and sits down in a smooth move, raises his legs, and takes hold of the leash to stop the paddleboard completely.
