She took them from him numbly, wanting to shake her head and say, “No, wait, you don’t understand. I don’t need them now. I’m staying.” But his face was hard and cold, and she didn’t know what he was thinking. Did he want her to go after all? Why didn’t he ask her to stay? Why didn’t he take her in his arms and force her to confess her love?
“The fellow who runs the boat Dede uses is making a run to Guam,” Mitch continued. “He’s leaving first thing in the morning and has agreed to take you along.”
She swallowed. “Mitch...” she began, but the words wouldn’t come.
He shrugged, his eyes revealing no emotion. “I guess that’s about it. I’ve got more calls to make.” He started to push past her, but stopped when she put her hand on his arm.
“Mitch...” Her voice was strangled, but he avoided her eyes.
“Let’s just make a clean break now, Heather,” he said coldly. “It’s better that way.”
He pulled out of her grasp and she watched, stunned, as he headed toward the Jeep. She was still standing in his open doorway as he roared down the road, sending up a plume of red dirt behind him.
Anger warred with the sharp flash of pain that cut through her. He didn’t want her to stay at all. If he had, he would have worked a little harder at keeping her. Instead, he seemed almost glad to be rid of her now. Perhaps he’d grown bored with this game. Maybe he’d suddenly remembered why he’d left her in the first place.
But he couldn’t leave like this, not even giving her a chance to talk. She had to tell him what she thought of the way he’d treated her. She looked around helplessly. She had to let him know how she felt.
She stepped into his house, searching for paper. She would write him a letter, spill out all the hurt and... and maybe even all the love. He’d read it when she was too far away for it to do any good. She gritted her teeth, knowing how childish she was being. But she was beyond caring. She hurt, and she wanted to hurt back.
She pulled open one drawer after another, looking for paper. She found old check stubs and wrinkled receipts, but no stationery. Then she came across something curious. In a bottom drawer in the kitchen, below the tea towels and silverware, she discovered a bundle of letters tied together with string. They were the letters she’d mailed to Mitch over the last few months asking him to sign the papers she’d sent him. She pulled at the string to get a better look. There among the violet notepaper were the two sets of forms she’d sent, one after the other, waiting for his signature to release his hold on the house. He’d had them all along.
At first she stared at them, wondering what they could possibly mean, but little by little it became clear to her. He’d received them and stored them away, knowing she might have to come after him. He’d set her up. He’d manipulated her. He’d forced her to come to him.
Her heart began to thump loudly in her chest. Did that mean he still loved her? Did that mean he still wanted her to stay?
No, it only meant he’d wanted her to come to his island. She bit her lip, worrying it with her teeth. What was the matter with her? All she ever did, all she’d ever done, was sit around wondering what Mitch really meant by what he said and did. That was how she’d lost him the first time. That was how she’d almost lost him again.
Almost, but not quite. Trembling with excitement, she left the house and began to run down the road to where Kevin lived in the blue Quonset hut. This time she would face Mitch and have it out. If she asked him directly, she might find out what he really wanted. And while she was at it, she might try giving him the scoop on what she really wanted. What a novel idea, she thought sarcastically. What a wonder she’d never thought of it before.
“Kevin!” she called, rousing him from a chair in his living room, “let me borrow your car!”
In another few minutes she was speeding down the island roads in Kevin’s blue Mustang, taking the bumps like a race car driver. She didn’t know where Mitch had gone, but she was bound and determined to find him.
She cruised through three villages before she discovered someone who’d seen where he went. “He was heading toward that new house he just built up on the sea cliff,” a farmer told her, leaning on his hoe. She thanked the man and hurried toward her destination, not sure if she was going to be rejected again, but certain she had to risk confronting him.
Sure enough, the Jeep stood beside the gleaming house. She parked close by, then turned off the engine and slipped quietly from the car. The front door was open, and she walked right in.
Mitch was standing in the doorway of the living room, leaning against the wall with one arm, his eyes dark and unwelcoming. Once again he reminded her of a panther, but this time it was a dangerous cat, one whose lair had been violated and who meant to eject the intruder.
“What are you doing here?” he asked coldly.
She paused, feeling sick and light-headed with fear. He didn’t want her here, that was plain. “I think we should talk,” she began, but he shook his head.
“We don’t have anything left to say to one another,” he replied quietly. “You want to leave, and you can now. There’s nothing to hold you here.”
Her throat was too dry to speak. She gazed at him miserably. “There’s everything to hold me here,” she forced out. “There’s you.”
He frowned, turning away. “Don’t do this, Heather,” he answered quietly. “Just go back and get ready for your great escape. I know how much you hate it here.”
Tears were springing to her eyes and she took a step toward him, then stopped, too afraid to touch him. “I don’t hate it here,” she protested. “You’ve taught me to like it. Some day I think I might even love it.” Taking all her courage in hand, she reached out to touch a trembling finger to his cheek. “I know I love you,” she whispered. “I can’t leave you again. Oh, please let me stay, Mitch. I don’t need marriage. I wouldn’t force you to go through that again. But I need you. I can’t...”
Her flow of words was stemmed by surprise as he took her shoulders in his hands, practically shaking her to silence. “Don’t torment me, Heather,” he grated out. “I won’t have you here hating every minute. I won’t have you here at all if you won’t marry me again. If you don’t think you can make that commitment, I couldn’t stand the wait, wondering when you were going to leave.”
“Do you mean you’re asking me to get married again?” she said with a gasp. “I thought you didn’t want that.”
He frowned. “I only said that to put you at ease. I thought you might fell less pressured.”
They stared at one another, not quite ready to trust what they’d heard. Suddenly they were both chuckling, holding one another tightly and laughing without restraint. “I found the old sets of papers in your house,” she said breathlessly. “Did you really hold them back to force me to come out here?”
“Of course.” He dropped a kiss on her nose. “I missed you so badly, and I was so sure we might make it together again if only we could make a fresh start, somewhere far away from Flagstaff and your parents and your cousin Trevor.”
She pulled back and looked into his eyes. “Were you jealous of Trevor?” she asked incredulously. “How could you have been so silly?”
He grimaced. “Trevor was always there as an example of how you wished I would act.”
“No!” she denied. “I never wanted you to be a carbon copy of Trevor.”
Mitch shrugged painfully, his eyes haunted by memories. “It seemed that way at the time,” he said simply.
She buried her head against his warm chest. “Oh, Mitch,” she whispered. “If only we’d talked things out more honestly then.”
He stroked her hair. “Is it really true, Heather?” he asked almost shyly. “Do you think you could learn to like it here?”
She nodded. “I know I can. A whole world of possibilities is opening up for me here—things I never dreamed I might be interested in doing.” She raised her head again to meet his dark gaze. “I’m going to take Lizzie to Flagstaff; that is
, if she and her mother agree. Kevin wants to go along to set up the medical care.”
“Wait a minute,” Mitch protested, frowning. “I thought you just said you were going to stay here with me.”
She smiled teasingly. “I’ll come back. In fact, Kevin and I have been talking about doing this sort of thing on a regular basis, finding poor children here in the islands who need something they can’t get here—medical care, education, whatever—and raising money to take them to where they can get help.”
Mitch regarded her skeptically, but at least he wasn’t condemning the project outright. “We’ll talk this over later,” he told her, stopping her words with a finger on her lips. “Right now I want to talk about us, you and me, and when we’re getting married.”
She grinned, pulling out of his arms. “Remarried, you mean. Did you really plan to lure me here from the beginning? Do you know how romantic that is?”
He leaned back against the wall, studying her with narrowed eyes. “I only know how desperate I was. In Flagstaff everything seemed so confused and tangled with bad emotions. When I had some time to think, I realized how little chance we really gave our marriage. I knew I had to try again.”
He grinned sheepishly. “I built this house for you. I wanted a place as good as something you might find in the States.”
She winced. “And I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic in my praise, was I?”
He chuckled lightly. “You will be when I promise it will be spider-proof.”
She grinned. “That’s definitely important,” she agreed. “So, in order to get me here, you pretended not to receive the papers on the house.”
He nodded. “And alerted Gary Smith that he might be hired to bring you down here, paying him a nice little bonus to be sure to get his plane out of here the minute your back was turned.”
She laughed with delight. “You did that? And I suppose you had Dede take the papers with her?”
“No, not really. I did put the papers with the penicillin and hoped for the best, but Dede didn’t know her part in it all.”
“Mitch, Mitch.” She rushed back into his arms, holding on as though afraid to lose him. “Tell me it’s really true. Tell me you want me.”
He nuzzled the hollow of her neck with his warm face. “I want you, Heather. I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you from the first day I saw you in that anatomy class. And I never will.”
She sighed, happiness washing over her like a wave of golden water. “Never, never,” she whispered in agreement as his lips caressed the tender area behind her ear, coaxing out the trembling passion that hid so near the surface. This time, she thought before she let the current of his love carry her beyond thinking, this time it would work. This time they knew one another as they never had before. This time they would keep strong the bond that would tie them, one to the other, forever.
They planned to keep everything low-key. They argued over whether or not to actually have another wedding, then planned a quick, private exchange of vows in front of the local notary public, the only official they could think of. But as the others got wind of their plans, things began to snowball and before she knew what was happening, it was out of her control. Mele was planning a huge feast and DeDe was organizing flower girls to dance and sing during the reception and Kevin was working with Danny to write them a wedding theme song and Heather found herself picking out a lacy wedding dress to be flown in from Guam. Somehow, the local priest got involved, promising a touching ceremony on the cliff overlooking the ocean, right where Mitch was building his house. Then word came that Mitch’s brothers and sister wanted to come, then a couple of the cousins, too.
“Your whole family is coming,” she wailed to him as they got more news from Hawaii.
He looked at her, slightly worried. “Are you going to invite yours?” he asked.
She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “Not this time,” she said, realizing that the way her people had undermined Mitch had been a big part of the problem with their marriage. “They had their chance. Now I guess we’ll see how your crew handles things.”
He looked relieved. “Okay.” He touched her chin, gently raising her face to his so that he could kiss her. “But I won’t stand in your way if you decide to invite them,” he said. “Even Trevor. We can deal with it.”
They could deal with it. That was their new motto. She smiled at him lovingly and knew this was going to make all the difference. This time, the wedding would work and the marriage would take hold and they would get what they deserved—their great big wonderful “happily ever after”.
Yup--they could deal with it.
The End
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DESTINY BAY BOOKS AVAILABLE NOW
Buy at Amazon: http://amzn.to/1dx9Fqc
Destiny Bay Romances ~ Forever Yours
Book 1-My Little Runaway
Book 2-Wife For a Night
Book 3-Too Scared to Breathe
Book 4-Make Believe Wife
Book 5-Promoted to Wife
Book 6-Not the Marrying Kind
Destiny Bay Romances ~ Baby Dreams
Book 1-Husband Wanted:Will Train
Book 2-The Baby Invasion
Book 3- Waiting for Someone like You
Book 4-Tick Tock, Baby Clock
Book 5-Jilted
Book 6-Waiting for Baby Kate
Destiny Bay Romances ~ The Ranchers
Native Silver
Destiny Ranch
Sweet Desperado
Destiny Bay Romances~Islanders I
Book 1-Saved By You
Book 2-Found By You
Book 3- Tempted By You
Destiny Bay Romances~Islanders II
Book 4-Rescued By You
Book 5-Charmed By You
Book 6-Blessed By You(coming soon)
Destiny Bay Romances ~ Sweet Editions
Book 1-Run Run Runaway
Book 2-A Little Blackmail
Book 3-Moving Too Fast
ABOUT AUTHOR
Helen Conrad is an award-winning, bestselling author of more than 90 romances (over 15 million copies sold) published under various pseudonyms with Harlequin, Silhouette, Loveswept, and others. She is currently revamping and rewriting much of her backlist--some available in the US for the first time--to present on Kindle.
"The Destiny Bay Romances take place in the sort of beach town I've always loved--and now I live in one! But writing about beach towns came first and this series is centered on the rich, influential Carrington family living along the California Coast and its interior valleys, and in Hawaii. These are good-looking, fast-driving, hard-hitting men and women whose impulses lead them into trouble every time--and inevitably to fall in love.”
Helen Conrad on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1dx9Fqc
Charmed By You ((Destiny Bay Romances-The Islanders 5)) Page 16
