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As Archie and I danced, drank, and ate cake, everything felt right. Like we were made to be together. The abundance of love and happiness in the room made even my secret feel lighter, and I began to think about it differently. It was just one more connection between us, right? Over the course of the evening, I managed to convince myself that I’d held it so long I might have blown it out of proportion. Maybe Archie would take this information in stride, the way he easily dealt with every other thing that came his way.
I’d just tell him. Just get it out in the open. I had the confidence of a woman who knew the man she was with cared for her, who knew we could work through small differences. And I wanted to build something with Archie, maybe even marry him one day.
I thought about that more than I should have, and did my best to convince myself it was just the mood of the day, the beauty and love all around us that had my mind on white dresses and forevers.
As the reception wound down—fairly early in the night, thanks to the number of children present and the fact that the couple had a newborn—Archie and I wandered out into the lobby, holding hands, and I steeled myself to share the last bit of information that kept a wedge of distance between us.
He pulled me to him in the center of the space, and we stood looking at one another beneath the glittering chandelier that hung from the ornate ceiling above.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, his deep blue eyes holding my gaze. “I’m so glad we met.”
“Me too,” I said. I gathered my courage and let my eyes drift to one side as I assembled the words I needed inside my head, but they all fluttered away as my gaze landed on the enormous painting that hung over the reception desk.
“Sea to Sea?” I said, reading the plaque beneath the artwork.
“What?” Archie’s forehead wrinkled as he looked down at me. I glanced at him and then back up at the painting, turning him and pointing.
“The painting. It’s called ‘Sea to Sea.’”
“Sea to Sea,” he said. “S to S! That must be it!” He moved closer to the desk, craning his neck to look up. The painting was enormous, taking up the bulk of the wall over the desk. “How did I not think of that before? This thing is huge. What could be more obvious?”
“It’s so big it kind of becomes part of the wall,” I pointed out.
“How do we get it down?” Archie asked, and I could see him contemplating climbing onto the reception desk and leaping to pull it down.
“A ladder. And more people than you and me,” I suggested.
He turned to look at me, his face falling slightly. “We can’t do it without Aubrey. She’ll kill me.”
“It’s her wedding night,” I said. “Even if she’d be okay with a call right now, it’s probably not the right move.”
Archie let out a sigh. “This is it!”
“It might be,” I told him. “We don’t know for sure.”
We both stared up at the painting, which showed a wide range of enormous mountains overlooking a body of water that seemed much more like a lake than a sea to me. It was beautiful, kind of eerie even.
“I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight,” Archie said, a note of disappointment in his voice.
“I have some ideas for things we could do until we can talk to Aubrey,” I told him, earning a raised eyebrow and a lopsided smile.
“Oh yeah?” he asked, taking my hand.
“I think so.”
Archie pulled me toward him, and we practically raced to his room, where I kept him entertained until the very small hours of the night. I did not, however, tell him the thing I’d promised myself I would. And when the frenzy of desire had cooled and I stepped back out of the bathroom and approached the bed, ready to tell him everything, Archie let out a light snore that told me this wasn’t going to be the time either.
Guilt curled up inside me and nestled down to wait.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Romantic Proposition: Get Some Ladders
GHOST
True to her word, Emily kept my mind off the painting hanging in the lobby all night long. If anything, knowing it was there, waiting for us to discover its secret just added to the anticipation and pleasure we shared until we both finally fell asleep.
When I woke, Emily was still in my arms, and I spent a long moment just wondering at the way life had shifted and morphed in the last few weeks.
