She wanted a man like Max, who wasn’t afraid to stand up for her to her parents, her brothers. To declare his love.
Yeah, she’d gotten that in Roark. And frankly, in Seth too.
“You know why he hasn’t called, don’t you, Darek?”
Darek sighed. “Go talk to him.”
Amelia nodded. “No more secrets.”
“I think this has gone far enough, Roark.” Ethan, in one square of the Skype screen, shook his head, a glass of something amber in his hand, the view of some clubhouse behind him—a sprawling lawn, the occasional laughter of the highbrow set relaxing after a round of golf. “You’re properly out of your mind.”
In the other square, Uncle Donovan sat in a leather chair at his office, the view behind the window one of gray skies and penthouses. “I concur. We’ve put this off long enough, Roark. It’s time to settle this business and come home. I understand you have feelings for this girl, but staying there is quite out of the question. Enough foolishness. Sort it out and get on a plane.”
“Uncle, I promise you, I’m not being foolish. I think this is something I’ve been considering a long time. Probably since Paris, but maybe even before—”
“You’re not going to bring up that nonsense about Uganda, are you? Son—”
Roark tried not to cringe, but somehow, when Uncle Donovan called him son, it only raked open the old wounds.
Uncle Donovan continued without noticing. “I know you’ve had a rough go of it, but two years is long enough to nurse your wounds. You’ve blown through your monthly allowances like water—”
“He gave most of it away, Donovan.” This from Ethan, always his protector. “Early on to Francesca’s family and the victims in the fire. Then, pretty much wherever he went, he seemed to find something worthy of a fortune—”
“It wasn’t that much,” Roark argued. “Not after Eton and university and the flat in Paris . . .”
“And the Ferrari. Let’s not forget about that,” Ethan said.
Maybe not so much of a protector as Roark thought.
“Exactly why you need to pack up and head home, my boy,” Uncle Donovan said again. “I’ve already told the board you’ll be there for the quarterly meeting. Don’t make me break my word—again.”
Roark sat at the table in his flat, overlooking the view of the lake, the fishing boats just returning to the harbor, seagulls circling in anticipation. Soon the fish house would fire up and fragrance the entire harbor with the scent of hickory wood and smoked lake trout, herring, and cisco.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to, Uncle. But this time it’s for good. I . . . I’ve found what I’m looking for. Something more valuable than money or a position at the Constantine Worldwide helm.”
Uncle Donovan rolled his eyes. “You sound just like your father.”
What—?
“Right after university, he came home and told your grandfather he didn’t want to join the company. Made us all feel like guttersnipes for our club memberships.”
He had? “It’s not like that. I promise.”
“You have a responsibility, Roark. To your father and your grandfather.”
Roark glanced at Ethan, who had fired up a cigar. He raised an eyebrow, like Don’t look at me.
“I think if you take a good look at this, Uncle, you’d agree that maybe you don’t want me anywhere near the family business. If you haven’t noticed, I’m cursed. The farther away I stay from Constantine Worldwide, the better.”
“One accident—”
“An accident that cost a dozen people their lives and burned down an entire city block. Don’t be trite, Uncle.”
Uncle Donovan’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. Then how about this. Have you lost your mind? There is nothing left of your inheritance, and if you walk away from your grandfather’s place at the table, you’ll have nothing. That’s millions of euros in stocks and bonds.”
No. He’d have peace. A home—one he’d longed for since his family died. If, that was, Amelia decided that yes, he could stay as a permanent part of her life.
The word if suddenly took up all the oxygen in the room. Gave him pause. Made him slow his headlong rush into financial martyrdom. “Okay, I’ll think about it. In the meantime, you draw up a list of replacements. But I’m not going to make the mistakes of my father and surrender to the call of money.”
“You might not be so self-righteous if you knew your father came home because your mother had cancer. He couldn’t afford the medical costs. So he asked me to create a position for him in the family business. He couldn’t afford to live on a dream, and neither can you, Roark.”
His uncle’s words put a fist into his sternum, stole his breath. His mother’d had cancer?
He didn’t know where to file that information. Instead, he answered, “I have a job.”
“You live over a coffee shop.”
Ethan nodded, the traitor.
“Roark, you need to think about this. You’ve had everything you needed—and wanted—since you were twelve. Cars, vacations—and these past two years, you’ve squandered everything with the hope that you might escape your mistakes and, apparently, find absolution. Or even peace. But there is no peace in this world, not without security. And you can’t have that without money.”
“There’s more to life than money.”
“Says a rich boy who can’t remember living without it.” Uncle Donovan shook his head. “Don’t get preachy on me. But think about this: when you need it, you’ve always had the money to obtain it, whatever it is. You walk away, and that’s gone. You’re gone. Position, power, and wealth make you someone. Give you influence. You can help people and change the world with money. That’s what your father finally figured out.”
Donovan’s quiet, precise words pricked the back of Roark’s throat. “I know you mean well but—”
“I do mean well. I always have. End this business and come home.” Uncle Donovan disconnected before Roark could argue further.
But Ethan stayed on the line, his face filling the screen. “Your uncle is right, mate. You can’t walk away from your entire life because of one girl.”
“Amelia doesn’t want to leave Deep Haven. Her life is here.”
“So she says. But this is not hard, Roark. You tell her you’re wealthy. She asks, ‘How wealthy?’ You answer, ‘Very, very wealthy,’ and she says, ‘When do we leave?’ This is not hard!”
“You’re forgetting that moment when she says, ‘You lied to me.’”
“She’ll get over it when she sees the view from your flat in Brussels.”
Roark shook his head. “Not Amelia. She’s . . . I’m not sure it would matter to her. And if I tell her now, I’ll never really know, will I?”
“But you’ll have the girl, Roark. It doesn’t matter how. Just do it. It’s like a Band-Aid—you have to rip it off.”
A knock at the screen door behind him. Roark turned.
Amelia stood on the other side of the screen. “Sorry to interrupt.”
Blimey, he should have closed the door after his run this morning. But with the cool breezes off the lake, the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee floating up the stairs . . . “Be right there,” he said, trying to keep his voice tight, not let fear trickle out.
How much had she heard?
“Gotta run, Ethan.” He closed the cover on his laptop without a proper good-bye, but probably Ethan had seen everything.
And knew how close Roark’s life was to truly falling apart.
He stood, his entire body still aching from his run, and managed a smile as he hobbled to the door. “Amelia!”
She stood, hands on her hips, wearing leggings, her running shoes, and an oversize sweatshirt, her hair in a messy bun, looking so impossibly young, it struck him again that she was just turning twenty-one.
He heard that if in his mind again. If.
“I was going to—”
“Roark, tell me the truth. Are you leaving town?”
He frowned, shook his hea
d. “No. I, uh—”
“Because Darek seems to know something about you that I don’t.”
She cocked her head, and his smile fell. “Ames—”
She froze, her eyes wide. “You’ve never called me Ames. I was always Amelia to you. Until right now.”
“Amelia. Sorry—”
“Oh, I can’t believe I didn’t see this.” She sank down on the stairs. “I’m such a fool.”
He stood there, stymied. “See what?”
She looked up at him, defeated. “You don’t look at me the way you did in Prague.”
“Of course I don’t!”
“I used to be Amelia the traveler, Amelia the brave. Now I’m Ames, the kid sister of Darek and Grace. In need of protecting.” She got up, but he grabbed her arm.
“What are you talking about?” He had raised his voice; now he cut it low. “I don’t see you as a child—I never did. And of course you’re not the same person you were in Prague. There—yeah, I thought you were brave and beautiful, and I loved every minute we spent together. But there I was the protector. Here . . . here I need you, Amelia. I need the woman who stands up for me and believes I can live in her world. I need the woman who makes me think I’m no longer cursed!”
She blinked at him. “Cursed? Roark, what are you talking about?”
There he went, blurting out the truth, letting it hang there, raw and brutal and horrid. He hadn’t quite meant for it to come to this. “God has cursed me.”
Her voice softened. “Why would you say that?”
“Maybe cursed is the wrong word, but He certainly doesn’t like me, and for good reason.”
She just frowned.
“You don’t get it, Amelia. You . . . you see God through eyes of hope and expectation. But I’m on the other side. He’s . . . Well, you know my parents’ story. They turned away from His calling, and for it . . . they were murdered.”
Her eyes glistened. “God didn’t punish your parents.”
But he barely heard it, his throat thickening as he looked away, sat on the stairs. “And I only made it worse.”
“What are you talking about?”
He sighed. “Do you ever wish that you could go back, change one decision, and then your life might fall into place?”
She swallowed. “Yes.”
Wait. What if it was—?
“I should have never run away from you in Prague. I should have let you in, forgiven you.” She sat next to him. “I acted like a child, and I regret that.”
Oh, Amelia. “I think we were both to blame in Prague. I wasn’t . . . Well, I wasn’t completely honest with you. I was afraid that if you knew the truth, you’d run.”
“Why would I run?”
He closed his eyes. “Because I’m not a brave man. Because, at my core, I am a coward.”
“Roark—”
“I’ve been running from God since that day on the beach, when I let my parents’ killer go free. God gave me plenty of opportunities—even called me into missions in Uganda, but . . . I said no. Only a coward says no to God.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. “That’s not true.”
He didn’t want to argue with her.
“Tell me what happened. How did you say no to God?”
He couldn’t look at her, the memory so ugly, it might show in his eyes. “I told you about the refugee camp I worked at in my gap year. What I didn’t mention was that I loved it. I felt, for the first time since my family died, that I might have recaptured what we’d had in Russia. I knew I was supposed to do something, that God was calling me to something bigger. So I went home and told my uncle that I wanted to join a seminary. He went off his trolley. He had different plans for me and intended that I follow them.”
“What kind of plans?”
This is not hard, Roark.
Except it was. “He wants me to take over the family business.” He gave a rueful smile. “Hotels.”
She gave him a curious look. “Your family has a hotel?”
“More than one. Brussels, Paris.” And about ten other countries.
“What happened when you told your uncle you wanted to be a missionary?”
“I behaved rather beastly and told my uncle to snuff it. Then I took off for Italy.”
“Why Italy?”
“I’d met a girl in camp during my gap year, and I thought she shared my call. Turns out, she didn’t care for the poor-missionary version of me.”
Her voice turned tender. “Then she was a fool.”
Maybe he could believe that with Amelia’s beautiful eyes in his.
He looked away. “I ended up broke, sitting at a train station, calling my uncle to wire me money. I went home and enrolled in university and ended up in Paris.”
A beat passed as he blew out a long breath.
“I have a feeling that’s not the end of the story, is it?” She tilted her head. “What happened in Paris, Roark?”
So maybe he would just yank off the Band-Aid, as Ethan had suggested. “You’re right; I can’t be a professional student forever. In fact, I never was.”
She went very still.
“I never told you why I left Paris. Why I spent the past two years traveling. Or who you saw me talking to in Prague.”
“Hugging.”
“Quite right. Hugging. She was the sister of my fiancée. I wanted her permission to fall in love with you.”
She blinked at him. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand. You’re . . . Please don’t tell me I’m that stupid.”
“No—I’m sorry; that came out wrong. Francesca is dead. She died in a fire—a hotel fire.”
“Oh . . .” And then she got it. “Oh! Roark, how awful.”
She made to reach for his hand, but he pulled away. “You might not like this part. It was my fault. It happened on the eve of my twenty-third birthday. I had a party—a big party. There was a fire, and people got trampled trying to escape. Francesca was one of those people.”
“Roark, you can’t believe that Francesca’s death was somehow your fault.”
“It was completely my fault. Because my family is cursed. My father turned away from God’s call, and so did I.”
“Do you think that your parents’ deaths, and the fire, were God’s punishment?”
His jaw tightened.
She pressed her hand to his arm. “That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”
“Tell that to Jonah.”
“Jonah—and the whale? God wasn’t punishing Jonah—”
“What would you call three days in a fish’s belly?”
“Getting his attention?”
He gave a laugh, nothing of humor in it. “Well, he certainly got mine. Reminded me that I had failed Him. I left Paris and didn’t look back. I’ve done everything I can think of to forget, outrun the grief, the curse.”
“Are you still running? Is that what Darek knows? Are you . . . ?” She swallowed, looking impossibly vulnerable. “Leaving?”
“No.” He drew in a breath. “What he knows is that I want your life, Amelia. I want the world you live in. You have riches here you have no idea of. I think perhaps, finally, God has given me another chance, because why else would He put you in my life, send me to this backwoods hamlet, but to tell me I can start over?”
Her eyes widened.
“I know that the man you met in Prague isn’t the one you see before you today. But hopefully you know enough of me to believe me when I say I am not going anywhere. Not without you. You stay; I stay.” He took her face in his hands. “You are not a fling, Amelia. For me, you are the reason to stop running.”
She gave him a look, the same one she’d given him almost five months ago, across a crowded room in Paris. New Year’s Eve, a night of new beginnings, and he saw it again now, on her face, an answer, perhaps . . . Yes.
“Oh, Amelia.” He had no choice but to kiss her. He tried to hold back, to keep his touch light, soft, but she wasn’t having it that way. She made a little noise of surprise, then
something more, deeper, and ran her arms around his neck, curling herself against him.
That’s all it took for Roark to dive in, kissing her like he’d imagined for five months—maybe longer. Really kissing her, with his hands in her hair, his heart so full in his chest it might explode. Amelia.
This was the only fortune he needed. This woman who made him feel rich, who didn’t see his mistakes.
He loved her. The entirety of his feelings rushed over him.
He’d loved her in Prague for the possibility of who she might be in his life. Today he loved her for herself—the brave, forgiving person who could set him free.
He leaned back, his breath shuddering out, his thumb caressing her cheek. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a while.”
“I told Seth I wouldn’t kiss either of you until I knew . . .” She swallowed and looked away, but he caught her chin.
“Does this mean—?”
She suddenly frowned, pulled his hand away. Took the other and held them open. “Roark, your hands. What does Kathy have you doing?”
She ran her fingers along the row of broken, rough blisters, some turned to calluses.
He didn’t want to lie to her—not anymore. But everything in this moment had sorted out so perfectly . . . Maybe she never needed to know about the inheritance, the life he wanted to cast aside for her. “You have to promise not to be angry.”
“Seriously?”
“Fine, okay. It’s from chopping wood.”
“Chopping . . . wood? What—?”
“I’ve been working with Darek—”
“He’s got a lot of nerve, roping you into free labor.”
“—in the afternoons. At the gravel pit.”
She frowned again.
“I’m in training for the lumberjack games.”
Her eyes widened, so he kept talking. “I know it sounds crazy, but I guess there’s a part of me that wants to fit in here and . . .”
“This is all about Seth!” She hit her feet. “What is wrong with you two?”
“I know—I know.” He stood too. “It’s just that—”
The Wonder of You Page 22
