“I’m sorry,” she said, and despite her flat tone, she did appear contrite. “I’m just—I’m not used to trusting people.” She shook her head. “That didn’t come out how I meant—what I meant was I’m not used to having to trust people. I know I have a lot of support, and I’m grateful for it. I know if I need my driveway plowed out or help with taking an old tree down, I have a couple dozen people I can call, any time of the day or night. I’m thankful for that, too. They know they have the same assist in return, if needed.”
“But the kind of trust we’re talking about here is different,” he finished for her. “You don’t usually need that. Because you’re usually the one providing the safe place for others. You’re the one they come to, but when push came to shove, it wasn’t a situation where you felt you could do the same in return. Not when the problem was personal.”
She simply stared at him, and then finally, she gave him a quick nod, a mere jerk of the chin. “It’s not because I’d doubt their sincerity, or their loyalty, or even their willingness. It’s just . . . not how things are. They confide, they share, they seek advice. I know everything about them, but I don’t do the same, share the same, so there’s no foundation going that direction, you know?”
He saw her shoulders stiffen, her spine straighten, and recognized them for the defense mechanisms they were, only this time he was pretty sure she was putting them up to defend against herself, against her own fears. It was the briefest of moments when her bottom lip quivered, that had him putting his coffee down, sliding his chair back, and very deliberately closing the short distance between them. He took the mug from her hands before she sloshed the contents and burned herself, and set it on the counter behind her. Then he closed his hands around hers, and drew them up between them, and waited, until she lifted her gaze to meet his.
“Talk to me,” he urged her. “I know you don’t want to talk about it at all, even with yourself. I know you wish you had a better sounding board, but I’m the one you’ve got. I don’t know that I’m any good at finding answers to your problems, even if you want me to. But I know I can listen.” The corners of his mouth kicked up. “Grace says I give good shoulder.”
Delia’s eyes were huge, luminous pools of sapphire blue, glistening with the threat of tears, like sun dancing along the surface of deep waters . . . even as a storm brewed just below. Even so, her lips quirked at that last comment.
His own smile surfaced fully. “So, I have that going for me. And I know I can offer honest opinions when asked.” When her eyebrow arched at that, he let out a short laugh. “Okay, maybe even when they’re not requested.” He held her hands more tightly in his and both of their expressions grew more serious. “We helped each other through a hard time once. And . . . maybe we were more than that, briefly, when we needed to be.” It was the first time he’d ever alluded to that night, but there was no point in picking some parts of what they’d meant to each other, and discarding others. It all mattered. “You can’t keep going like you’re going. Even you have to see that. You trusted me once. That’s all I’m trying to say. At one of the toughest times in your life.”
“I—” The single word was hardly more than a rasp. She stopped, and he saw her throat work, saw the tension tighten across her shoulders, could feel the flex of it in her hands, and knew she was going to pull away, going to refuse. Politely, perhaps, but still . . .
“We all need someone sometime,” he said quietly. “I’ve screwed that up in the past. With Grace. I know you know that, too.”
Her gaze flew to his. “I wasn’t—that’s not why—” She choked the words out hoarsely, eyes still glassy, the soft skin around them still puffy.
“Who knows, I could screw it up again this time. But it won’t be for lack of trying to get it right. The way I see it, the only person you don’t have to worry about, the only one you can be completely yourself with . . . the only one you can say anything to, scream, shout . . .” He ducked his chin down, kept her gaze when she would have let it slide away. “Cry,” he added, “is me.”
“Ford . . .” she began, but trailed off. Then he watched her regroup, pull the armor on, and his disappointment was so keen it was a physical hurt. She looked directly at him. “I—thank you, truly, but—”
“No thank you?” he finished for her, feeling the first bite of real frustration. “You know, I can understand you not wanting to deal with the possible sudden loss of the diner, but why in the hell won’t you at least try to help yourself?” She looked away, but he shifted so his gaze was still on hers. “Dee—”
“Stop calling me that!” she erupted, apparently as surprised by the outburst as he was, if her widening eyes and stunned expression were any measure.
“Okay,” he said slowly, after a brief pause, truly confused now.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m . . . tired. And, as you’ve so unfortunately seen firsthand, my head’s not exactly screwed on straight at the moment. But it will be.” She was talking faster as she went on, using speed to create an aura of confidence.
Not that he was buying it. “Delia,” he said, deliberately enunciating the syllables, and earning a scowl from her for the effort. “At least be honest enough to just up and say what it is you do want. Whatever the hell it is, however off the wall. It doesn’t matter. Just say it already. No judgment. No advice. Not from me. I get that you want nothing to do with me, but I’m here for the moment, so just put it all out there, use the moment, use me.”
She swore under her breath, and muttered something else that sounded a lot like “if you only knew how I’ve used you already,” but since that didn’t make any sense, he ignored it.
“Do you want out from under the diner? It’s a lot of work, you’ve devoted your whole life to it, so it wouldn’t exactly be a big shocker if you wanted to move on and do something else, spark a new fire, find a new passion.”
She looked away then, but not before he saw her cheeks turn bright crimson.
“Dee—I mean, Delia—shit.”
She swung her gaze back up and blurted out, “I dream about you. Okay? About us. About . . . back then. That night. When we were briefly . . . more, as you said. You called me Dee. You were the only one who ever did, except Gran. And I didn’t correct you, because . . . I didn’t. Only it’s now, in the dreams, not then. I can’t seem to stop. I don’t know why. There, I said it. Okay? Humiliation complete. Now maybe I can get past it and get past you, and figure out what the hell I’m going to do with the rest of my life. But I can’t do that with you, because—” She tugged a hand free, waved it around her head. “Understand?”
If she’d kneed him, he couldn’t have been more astonished. She . . . dreamed about him? Sex dreams? He flashed immediately back to the moments when she’d first woken up on the couch, had been all soft and open and . . . he felt a little heat rise up the back of his own neck. Well . . . damn. He didn’t know how he felt about it, but his first instinct wasn’t to be upset, while hers clearly was all that and more of the same.
“I’m—” He lifted his shoulders, a shrug of defeat, tried like hell not to smile. “Yeah. I got nothing.”
Her gaze narrowed. “You think this is funny?” She tugged her other hand free. “Well, of course you do. You’re a man. And you want me to trust you with my deepest, darkest, and yet the first thing you do is smirk because I dream about you? Really, Ford?”
“In my defense, I said I wasn’t sure I’d be any good at it, but—” He snagged her fist as she aimed it for his shoulder, wrapped his much bigger palm around it, and lowered it, then took her other hand, just to be safe, and held on to that one, too. “I wasn’t laughing at you. I was . . . hell, I guess I was flattered.” He still couldn’t quite wrap his head around her revelation, or the myriad of other things it might imply, much less how he felt about them.
He thought he might have spied steam starting to leak from her ears.
“There’s nothing wrong in my being flattered about you dreaming . . . you know, abou
t us,” he said. “You caught me off guard, okay? I—it wasn’t something I’d have guessed.”
The pink in her cheeks went straight back to a mortified red again, causing him to quickly play his words back. “No, that’s not—not that I wouldn’t think about you the same way, I just don’t—I haven’t—well, shit.” He risked letting go of one hand and cupped her cheek, brought her face back up until their gazes met again, then wove his fingers through her hair and tipped her face back when she tried to look away. “Actually, since we’re being honest . . . I have. Thought about it. That night. When Grace messaged me, told me you were in trouble, my thoughts went . . . well, there.” He let that trail off. “I don’t even know why, exactly. I haven’t let myself think about that time at all really. I spent so much time thinking about my life back then, my service, what I did, analyzing, reliving. . . at some point, when I’d done all the work I could do to fix myself, I made a decision to look forward, not back. So, it’s not an insult, or even personal, it’s just—”
“Survival,” she managed.
He nodded. “Yes. Then Grace came back into my life and . . . well, it’s not surprising that it’s dredged things up.”
“Dredged,” she echoed. “Lovely.”
He gripped her hand more tightly, and tipped her chin up. “Stop it,” he said, frustration back. God, she was the damnedest woman, made him feel the damnedest things. Hell, she made him feel, period. He’d gotten pretty damn good at not doing that. “I don’t mean it that way, and you know it.”
“I don’t know anything, Ford. You came back to Maine, and you were around all the time; then you started school, and you pulled away, and well... I knew you weren’t in great shape.” She lifted her free hand. “In here,” she tapped the side of his head. “Or in here.” She curled her fingers, pressed her knuckles to his chest. “I tried not to take it personally, told myself you needed to do whatever you needed to do. I knew I hadn’t pressured you, or pushed you. I just let you come into my orbit, and exist, because I thought—hoped, anyway—that it helped some. If I wanted anything more, well, I knew right off that wasn’t on the menu.” She tried a dry smile, but her eyes were still wary, and maybe a little sad.
“Did you—want more?” Why the hell are you asking her that? Let it go, man. She’s having an emotional life crisis and has twisted you up in it somehow, so don’t press her about it, for God’s sake.
“Maybe,” she said, surprising him with the directness, though why anything surprised him at this point, he hadn’t a freaking clue. “Okay, not maybe. I did. At first. Because you came back to Maine, and I couldn’t figure any other reason for you to do that than that I was here. I was the only connection left. But, like I said, I realized, pretty much right away, that you’d come here looking for . . . well, safe harbor. And while that security or grounding or . . . whatever you needed included me, it didn’t include any other kind of entanglement. I got that, too, understood it. I understand it now. And that’s okay, Ford. I was a grown woman by then, not a young, naïve girl.” She let out a short laugh. “Any naïve I had in me was wiped out when Henry left, then Tommy died, then the restaurant burned, then Gran . . .” She let the words trail off, shook her head slightly, as if brushing away past memories. She looked up at him. “Life happens and you learn from it. I did. So I was okay with whatever you needed from me. I just hope it helped.”
He searched those blue eyes and found he was no longer thinking of the young woman she’d been, the one grieving the loss of her brother, and the abdication of her young husband.... Now he was looking at the woman she was. And he didn’t need flashes of a long-ago stormy night to feel the things he was feeling. He realized now what some part of him had realized in the shower, when she’d come undone all over him and his heart had pounded as if something completely different was happening. Their bond wasn’t just one of shared tragedy, or a friendship forged under trying circumstances, then deepened during a time of healing, but more . . . a lot more. There were many reasons, good, solid reasons, behind his choice to live his life out on a solitary spit of land, but he could no longer pretend that one of them wasn’t avoiding having to deal with what was truly between them.
“It did help,” he said, the words a little gruff because his throat had tightened up. “Even more than you know.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “I thought when you moved out to the island full time . . . well, I guess I was more worried than anything. I wanted you to be okay. I worried that you weren’t.”
“I don’t know how you define okay, but if that means finding your place in the world and being at peace with it, then . . . yes, I’m okay.” He reached up, stroked a still-damp tendril of hair from her face. His fingers were steady, his heart was anything but. It had been a very, very long time since he’d been so intimate with someone. Even longer with someone who mattered. And there was no one, save Grace, his only family, who mattered more.
“You’re not okay, Dee,” he said, unaware he’d used the nickname until her pupils punched wide with instant awareness, the kind of awareness that made him all the more sensitive to just how close he stood to her, how he could feel her breath on his chin, her pulse leap where his fingers brushed against her temple. And that opened up something inside him he couldn’t seem to slap shut again. Wasn’t sure he wanted to. “Something’s going on inside you and you have to let it out.”
“I know you’ve seen me at my absolute worst,” she said. “At my lowest points. I—back then, we were both grieving, we both needed. It was easier, because there was give with the take.” She searched his eyes. “It’s not just trust, Ford. I do trust you. It’s about taking. I’m . . . not good at that.”
“I took from you,” he said. “When I came back. You said it made you feel good, to offer help. So, let me have that same pleasure. Or just consider this evening the score.”
A ghost of a smile hovered over her lips. “Somehow, I don’t think me falling apart all over you in my own shower was all that pleasurable for you.”
“If it helped, I’d do it again,” he said, and realized he meant it.
She looked away, clearly abashed.
“Don’t be embarrassed, it’s human, for God’s sake. We’re not perfect and we’re not impervious.”
“That’s just it. I don’t fall apart. I don’t. Not even in private. I work things out, I find solutions, I keep a cool head. I’m the rock, I’m the one who tethers others to shore.” She shifted, so her cheek was no longer in contact with his hand, then sidestepped out of his personal space, but no farther. Didn’t matter, it was a distinct divide, no matter how narrow. “I don’t know how to tether myself to someone else’s shore. But you’re right. I need to learn, because I feel like I’m losing it. And I don’t think I can do that with anyone but you.” She broke off, looked down again. “I’m not sure what the dreams mean, or why I have them, but that’s all they are, Ford. Maybe it’s some kind of mental retreat, to a safe place, a place that feels good, where there’s only pleasure. I’m not a shrink. But I do know that’s all they are. Harmless fantasy.” She looked up at him and a hint of that saucy smile of hers hovered at the corners of her mouth. “I’m not going to jump you is what I’m trying to say.”
“Dee—”
The smile ghosted away, and she looked as serious as he’d ever seen her. “But I appreciate the offer of an ear. Your ear. Hopefully, not your shoulder. I think I’m all cried out. God, I certainly hope so, anyway. I think it was just fatigue and worry and uncertainty that made that happen. I feel better for the release, maybe a bit hollow.” She shook her head again. “I don’t know what I feel. Except grateful for the offer.” She looked directly into his eyes, then. “Of an ear. Of help. Of friendship. I guess I do need it. I know I need something.”
“Well, for whatever I might be worth, you’ve got me.”
“You’re worth a lot.”
He nodded, surprised that what he felt wasn’t abject fear, or the urge to run and hide . . . but relief. Relief
she’d finally accepted that she shouldn’t struggle through this alone. Relief that he wasn’t going to be removed from her life again, this time by her choice. There were some other, stronger emotions swirling in there, too, but she’d made it clear she was only looking for—could only handle—friendship. So he thankfully, mercifully, didn’t have to examine them too closely. As it was, he was already hoping he didn’t let her down.
She picked up her coffee mug and stared down into the dark depths for a long moment. When she finally looked up at him again, she was smiling, as if she’d come to a decision, and was good with it. Her gaze was open, all the way down to her heart. No walls. And it was as if all the time they’d spent apart had simply gone away, leaving them once again at the core of what they truly were, what they’d always been. Two people joined in a unique bond. A team, a duet, a pair. Partners. Just the two of them against the world. In her eyes he saw relief, and trust, and . . . hope.
And, just like that, in this moment that felt separate and apart from all the moments that had come before it, he actually felt his heart . . . click. As if, after all this time when he’d thought it was better, a blessing even, to not feel at all . . . his heart had, in reality, just been tucked away. Healing. Hibernating. Waiting. Grace had opened the door a crack, letting the light back in, proving to him there was still life there. But it was only now, seeing the light shining in the depths of those beautiful blue eyes that he felt his heart come all the way back to life.
“So, about this rally circus your sister wants to throw,” she said, lifting her mug in a silent toast to their partnership. “How can we stop that from happening?”
Chapter 9
Delia turned from her street onto Hill Road, and then let her SUV roll to a stop as she looked out over the harbor below. Peg had more or less put her foot down and insisted she swap shifts with Delia for one more day, and Delia had been too tired to argue. That meant she wasn’t technically due in for hours yet, but . . . what else was she supposed to do? Besides, she had a mountain of office work to do. She always did, so she’d go hide in the back, get some work done, pull her thoughts together, then relieve Peg when the time was right. Sitting in her little house was just making her think of Ford, and she really didn’t need to be thinking about Ford.
Sandpiper Island (The Bachelors Page 13
