Silver Linings

by Debbie Macomber

  He’d built it for us.

  The truth of this realization hit me with renewed force. Stumbling into the kitchen I sat down while I sorted through my thoughts. When I felt my legs would hold me, I put on water for tea.

  Over the last month, I’d tried to push thoughts of Mark from my mind, although it seemed like an impossible task. It was time I fully owned up to the truth. I’d fallen in love with him, though I’d been oblivious to my own feelings mainly because I’d been wrapped up in my grief after Paul’s death.

  Looking back, I realized that Mark had done his best to hide his feelings for me. He recognized that I wasn’t in a place where my heart was free to love again, grieving for Paul as I did. It’d only been in the last nine months that I’d been receptive as our relationship blossomed into more than friendship. Even then I’d been blinded to what was right in front of my eyes.

  Mark had been the one to point out to me that I’d started to have feelings for him. As dumbfounded as I’d been when he said it, I realized now that he’d been right.

  Mark hadn’t wanted to love me. He fought it, feeling unworthy because of what had happened to him in Iraq. It had clearly shaken his sense of self. In the end he didn’t feel he could live with himself by abandoning Ibrahim. He made what must have been a heart-wrenching decision to return. He was prepared to die in order to right a wrong.

  Sipping the tea helped calm me. Maggie Porter had sent me this beautiful card telling me how grateful she was for her time at the inn. Despite the fact that I was a widow who’d already buried one man I loved, and that another was in danger, I tried to feel grateful for what I had, and this was the day to give thanks.

  I was about to head out to my parents’ when my office phone rang. “Rose Harbor Inn,” I said.

  “Jo Marie, it’s Peggy.” She didn’t stop, but continued, speaking so fast her words ran together. “Do you have your television on?”

  The urgency in her voice immediately put me on edge. “No. Why?” The only television on the main floor was in my personal area. “What’s happened?”

  Peggy hesitated, and when she spoke again she sounded undecided. “Listen, it might be best if I come over. I don’t want you watching the news alone.”

  I rushed into the other room and turned on the television, holding on to the phone with one hand and the remote with the other. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade flashed onto the screen and I started pushing buttons in an effort to locate a twenty-four-hour news channel.

  “Just tell me,” I blurted out, every part of my body starting to shake. “What’s happened?” Did she seriously think I would sit around and wait, not knowing, while she hurried to the inn?

  “There was a news flash…we don’t know—information is sketchy at best. It’s just so hard to tell. An American’s been captured in Iraq—”

  “Is it Mark?” I demanded, desperate to hear what she was trying to tell me. Whatever it was had badly shaken her. Before I went into a panic I forced myself to calm down. “There are lots of Americans in Iraq,” I argued, unwilling to believe this one, whoever he might be, was Mark. My Mark.

  “We don’t know for sure, ISIS didn’t announce the name.” Peggy went on to give the details of the largest and most fanatical of the terrorist groups whose name had been all over the news.

  “…the news agencies say it isn’t one of their journalists,” Peggy said.

  “Couldn’t it be an aid worker?” I said. My mouth had gone so dry that I found it difficult to talk. She didn’t need to remind me what had happened to other Americans held by this terrorist group. I struggled to swallow down the panic that started to build inside of me.

  “You think it’s Mark, don’t you?” I couldn’t think of any other reason she’d call me. For reasons, possibly ones Peggy and Bob had never told me, they believed the man in the hands of ISIS was Mark.

  Peggy didn’t answer me.

  “Peggy,” I cried out.

  “I…don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  Although I asked, I felt I already had my answer. My worst fears had been realized.

  Monday morning, Coco pulled up to the drive-through at Starbucks and was grateful to see that her friend Jill manned the window. Silly as it seemed, her stomach was in knots and she was jittery.

  Out of habit, she placed her usual order, but she wasn’t interested in drinking her latte. She wanted to know if Hudson was inside. Katie kept insisting he would be. Coco so badly wanted to believe her friend was right about Hudson, but she had doubts.

  As soon as she rolled up to the window to collect her latte, Coco asked Jill, “Is he here again? You know, the guy you mentioned last Wednesday?”

  Jill wriggled her eyebrows up and down several times. “Front and center. He parked himself by the front door and carefully watches everyone who steps inside. You gonna put him out of his misery?”

  Coco joyfully pumped her fists in the air. “I think I will.”

  Without hesitating, she drove around the building and parked in the lot, and then walked inside, holding on to her latte. Sure enough, Hudson sat at the table closest to the door. Without waiting for an invitation, Coco took the chair across from him and set her drink down on the table next to his closed laptop.

  He stared at her as if she were an apparition.

  “You know, it’s kind of silly for us to keep meeting like this,” Coco said, and crossed her legs as if she were completely relaxed, though she was anything but.

  Hudson blinked.

  “Are you here to see me?” Maybe she’d misread the entire situation, which would be highly embarrassing; that, however, seemed unlikely.

  He pushed his eyeglasses up the bridge of his nose and slowly nodded.

  “You do realize there are other ways of contacting me, don’t you? I have a phone. I live in a condo nearby.” With a bit of flair, she uncrossed her legs, stood, and prepared to leave. Then she decided she might give him a bit more encouragement, and leaned across the table and kissed his cheek.

  Hudson blinked again. Twice this time.

  “See you,” she said, on her way out the door.

  For the entire rest of the day she found it impossible to concentrate on her work. Her mind went in a dozen different directions, wondering how long it would take for him to make his move. If he finally did make a move. She glanced at her watch every ten minutes, wanting the day to pass, hoping with everything in her that Hudson would either call or stop by her condo that night. She’d been blatant enough that even he should be able to understand it was his move.

  As soon as she arrived home, Coco called Katie, telling her about what’d taken place that morning with Hudson.

  “Don’t worry,” Katie insisted. “He’ll be in touch.”

  “I hope God is listening,” Coco moaned. If she didn’t hear from him this time, she was finished.

  Katie’s smile was evident in her voice when she spoke next. “I’ve never seen you like this over a guy.”

  “I know, and I’m not even sure I know why. I mean, I do and I don’t. He’s so smart and so dense at the same time. He loved me from afar and I was such a jerk to him and oh, I don’t know—I can’t stop thinking about him. We seem like we’re totally mismatched, I know, and any relationship we have will probably go down in flames, but I don’t care, I want a chance with him.”

  “I don’t agree that you’re wrong for each other,” Katie countered. “You’ll make a great couple because you balance each other perfectly.”

  “Do we really?”

  “Coco, you hardly sound like yourself. Where’s that confident, gutsy girl I know so well?”

  “She’s still back in high school, praying a certain boy likes her enough to ask her to prom,” Coco admitted, pacing her living room floor like a prowling lion ready to spring into action.

  “Don’t worry. Hudson’s a smart guy, he’ll figure it out.”

  “I swear to you, Katie, if he doesn’t connect with me soon I will never go to that Starbucks again. I mea
n it. I can’t play these games; I don’t do well with this.”

  “Coco,” Katie said, sounding serious now. “Hudson isn’t the kind of person to play games.”

  Coco sincerely hoped her friend was right.

  “My guess is that he regrets not contacting you after the reunion and he’s trying to let you know how he feels, but a guy like Hudson isn’t good at expressing his emotions. But he feels so strongly about you that he’s willing to do whatever he can to let you know he’s interested in dating you. Hence the waiting game at Starbucks. This is probably about as good as it gets with someone like Hudson.”

  Coco mulled over her friend’s words. “When did you get so smart?” They chatted a few minutes longer and ended the call.

  At loose ends after talking to Katie, Coco continued to pace her living room, convinced she’d go crazy if Hudson kept her waiting for days on end. A hundred different things were calling for her attention. She had Christmas gifts to sew, cards to mail, books to read, dinner to cook, and laundry to do, and yet she found herself incapable of doing any one of those things.

  Her phone rang and she nearly fell on it in her rush to answer. It was her brother, looking for suggestions of what to buy his wife for Christmas. Disappointment hung on her like a dead weight. By nine-thirty she was convinced it was a lost cause for that night.

  Then her doorbell rang.

  The peephole told her it was Hudson. At last! It was Hudson. She was so relieved she wanted to cry.

  He wore a shirt and tie under his open jacket. His hair was combed and he held a potted poinsettia.

  Coco opened the door, smiled serenely, and then grabbed hold of his tie, causing him to stumble into the condo. She slammed the door closed with her foot.

  “I didn’t think you’d ever get here,” she said, so happy it was impossible to hold it inside.

  “I brought you…”

  “I know.” She took the plant out of his hand, set it aside, and then backed him against the door and kissed him. She realized she’d probably come on way too strong, but she wanted to make sure Hudson got the message of how happy she was to see him.

  His glasses were slightly askew when she lifted her head. “Okay, glad we’ve gotten that out of the way. Should we sit down and talk?” she asked.

  Instead, Hudson reached for her and pulled her back into his arms. He kissed her again, ravishing her mouth with his until she was so weak, it felt as if her knees were about to give out. When he released her, if anyone needed to sit, it was Coco. She sank onto the sofa, and after a moment Hudson joined her. He looked like he had something he wanted to say, but all he could do was look at her as if she were the most beautiful woman in the world.

  “Okay,” she said, smiling so big her mouth hurt. She doubted Hudson realized what a powerful punch his kisses carried. “I need to know where we stand…or sit, as the case may be. And it’d help if I knew why I didn’t hear from you after the reunion.”

  “I…I just couldn’t believe you were serious.” He tilted his head ever so slightly to one side and his mouth was set in a hard line. “Coco, you’re beautiful and I’m this nerdy guy who is in way over his head when it comes to understanding women. By the next morning, following the reunion, I was convinced there was no way you were genuinely interested in me.”

  Coco hung her head and looked down at her hands, which were clenched in her lap. “But I was…I am.”

  Hudson went still and quiet for several moments. “I’m not exactly a GQ kind of guy.”

  “And exactly whose opinion is that?” she demanded. While he might not be a cover model, there was more to Hudson than a dozen men she’d known through the years.

  “Come on, Coco. I know my strengths and I know my weaknesses, and relationships, especially with women, aren’t easy for me. You felt bad about what happened in high school. I get that, and when you found out it was me who’d slashed Ryan’s tires I became something of a hero in your eyes. In reality, that was the act of a coward. I figured that night with you on the bleachers was like the perfect storm. Everything came together at once, but it wasn’t meant to last. I figured you were probably happy I didn’t text you.”

  Raising her chin, Coco stared at him, finding it hard to believe he would even think such a thing. “That’s crazy. It doesn’t make sense that you’d even think that.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you, but it does to me.”

  Coco blinked. “Okay, but what changed your mind?”

  “Bumping into you that day,” he said, his look anxious. “You saw me and dropped your latte.”

  True, that hadn’t been her finest moment. She should have played it much cooler but had been taken by surprise. “I was shocked to see you, is all.”

  “I was surprised to run into you, too. I had no idea you went to that Starbucks. I’d only been there a couple of times.”

  Coco didn’t want to get hung up on the coincidence of their meeting. “But I don’t get what changed.” Coco needed to know if she was ever going to understand this man.

  Hudson lowered his eyes. “Truth is, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. Every night I go to sleep and you’re in my dreams. I keep thinking about kissing you and how good you’d felt in my arms. Then I wake up feeling empty and alone.”

  “You could’ve called me,” she reminded him gently.

  He shook his head. “I lost count of the number of times I wanted to text you, but I didn’t know what to say. I felt like I’d missed my chance. Weeks passed and I felt even if you were interested, which I was convinced you weren’t, that I’d probably blown it and you wouldn’t want to talk to me.”

  “But I did,” she whispered.

  His eyes were full of regret. “I’m sorry, Coco,” he said with such sincerity she couldn’t doubt his words. “That day when we bumped into each other everything changed. When you looked at me I saw something that almost made me run after you.”

  Coco frowned, not understanding what he was saying. Sure, she’d been shocked to see him, but she’d recovered quickly, or so she’d thought. “What did you see?”

  He hesitated and then admitted, “Pain flashed in your eyes. In my stupidity, I realized I’d hurt you.”

  “Stop saying you’re stupid, Hudson, because we both know you have the highest IQ of anyone I know.”

  “When it comes to you—”

  “Stop,” she insisted, interrupting him again.

  “I couldn’t get your look out of my mind. It ate at me. I had to do something to make it right, only I didn’t know what and so I started hanging out at Starbucks every morning in the hope that I’d see you again.”

  “But when I did show, all you did was buy my latte.” She didn’t mention that she already had a full one in her car.

  He snorted as if disgusted with himself. “I couldn’t get my tongue to work. I am so in awe of you. I was still convinced I’d read you wrong and that it was best to leave matters as they were. There you were, so perfect and so beautiful, and I couldn’t imagine why you’d want anything to do with me.”

  Coco cupped his cheek, holding her palm against his face. “I waited for you to talk to me, and when you didn’t, I wasn’t sure what to think.”

  “I don’t blame you. I didn’t know what to think, either. After you left, I wanted to kick myself. I’d let you go and there was so much I wanted to say and then this morning.” He paused and chuckled. “It’s a good thing you left when you did.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “After you kissed my cheek, I jumped up and did a jig around the table. It’s an Irish one. My mother is Irish from County Cork and she taught it to me. I’ll show you, if you like, one day.”

  “Really?” She laughed.

  “Oh yes, and then you said, ‘see you,’ and it was like a personal invitation.”

  “I meant every word.”

  “That was what I hoped. I was here about seven, parked outside your condo building. I think one of your neighbors must have called the po
lice because a patrol car came by and asked me what I was doing sitting in my car for hours on end.”

  “What were you doing?”

  He shrugged. “Working up the courage to come inside.”

  “Oh Hudson, if only you knew how antsy I’ve been, hoping you’d contact me. I’ve been on pins and needles all day, wishing so hard that I’d hear from you.”

  He smiled then and relaxed. “Can I kiss you again?”

  “Yes!”

  Hudson gathered her close and kissed her as if he was dying for want of her, as though he couldn’t get enough of what he needed in a single kiss.

  By the time he pulled away they were both breathing hard and heavy, sagging against each other. Coco balanced her forehead against his. “You aren’t going to change your mind again, are you?”

  “No, but…”

  “But?” There always seemed to be a but in conversations with Hudson.

  “There’s something you should know about me. I don’t have much experience.”

  “With what…relationships?”

  He tensed and his hands tightened around her upper arms. “That, too, but I’m talking about sex. I know you’ve probably had partners with far more expertise and—”

  Coco placed her hand over his mouth, stopping him. “It’s a bit early to be talking about sexual compatibility, Hudson.”

  His eyes widened. “See what I mean? I’ll screw this up sure as anything.”

  “Stop. You’re doing fine, just promise you’re not going to leave me again.”

  “Okay.”

  “As for my vast sexual experience, you might be surprised to know there hasn’t been anyone since…since that awful night with Ryan.”

  He shook his head as if he found it impossible to believe.

  “I didn’t feel I could trust another man or give my heart away,” Coco explained.

  “You can trust me,” Hudson said.

  “I believe I can,” Coco whispered. “In fact, there’s no one I’d trust more than you, Hudson Hamilton.”