“It’s just a dollhouse. Not worth bawling about,” he said tersely, trying to keep the sudden panic out of his voice.
She gave a short laugh as she swiped at her cheeks. “They’re happy tears. Oh, believe me. Will, it’s wonderful. I can’t tell you how much this will mean to Maddie. She tried to be brave about it but she was so heartbroken when I told her the dollhouse hadn’t survived the move. It was one of her last few ties to her father and she has always cherished it, I think because he gave it to her right after her diagnosis, a few days before he...”
Her voice trailed off for a moment and he thought she wasn’t going to complete the sentence, but then she drew in a breath and straightened her shoulders. “Before he left us.”
Will stared at her, trying to make sense of her words. “I didn’t realize your husband died so soon after Maddie’s cancer was discovered.”
She sighed. “He didn’t,” she said slowly. “His car accident was eighteen months after her diagnosis but...we were separated most of that time. We were a few months shy of finalizing our divorce when he died.”
She lifted her chin almost defiantly when she spoke the last part of the sentence.
He wondered at it, even as he tried to figure out how the hell a man with a beautiful wife and two kids—one with cancer—could walk away from his family in the middle of a crisis.
He left us, she had said quite plainly. He didn’t miss the meaning of that now. The man had a daughter with cancer and he had been the one to walk away from them.
Will had a sudden fierce wish that he could have met her husband just once before he died, to teach the bastard a lesson about what it meant to be a man.
She was waiting for him to answer, he realized.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said, wincing at the inane words. “That must have been hard on you and the kids during such a rough time.”
She managed a wobbly smile. “You could say that.”
“All this time, you never said anything about your marriage. I had no idea it was rocky.”
She sighed and leaned against the work table holding the resurrected dollhouse.
“I don’t talk about it much, especially when the kids are around. I don’t want them thinking less of their father.”
He raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing. He had his own opinions about it but he didn’t think she would be eager to hear them.
“Maddie’s diagnosis kicked Kevin in the gut. The stark truth is, he just couldn’t handle it. His mother died of cancer when he was young, a particularly vicious form that lingered for a long time, and I think he just couldn’t bear the thought that he might lose someone else he loved in the same way.”
What kind of strength had it taken her to deal with a crumbling marriage at the same time she was fighting for her daughter’s life? He couldn’t even imagine it.
He studied her there in his workshop and saw shadows in her eyes. There was more to the story, he sensed.
“Was there someone else?” Some instinct prompted him to ask.
She gave him a swift, shocked look. “How did you know that? I haven’t told anyone else. Not even Sage and Anna know that part.”
“I don’t know. Just a guess.” He couldn’t very well tell her he was becoming better than he ought to be at reading her thoughts in her lovely green eyes.
She sighed, tracing a finger over one of the arched windows on the dollhouse. “A coworker. He swore he only turned to her after we separated—after Maddy’s diagnosis—because he was hurting so much inside and so afraid for the future.”
“That doesn’t take away much of the sting for you, I imagine.”
“No. No, it doesn’t. I was angry and bitter for a long time. I mean, I was the one dealing with appointments and sitting through Maddie’s chemotherapy with her and holding her when she threw up for hours afterward. I was scared, too. Not scared, I was terrified. I used to check on her dozens of times a night, just to make sure she was still breathing. I still do when she’s having a rough night. It was a miracle I could function, most days. I was just as scared, but I didn’t turn to someone else. I toughed it out by myself because I had no choice.”
He couldn’t imagine such a betrayal—more than that, he couldn’t understand why she could seem to be such a happy person now after what she had been through.
Most women he knew would be bitter and angry at the world after surviving such an ordeal but Julia seemed to bubble over with joy, finding delight in everything.
She had been over the moon that he had repaired a dollhouse her bastard of an almost-ex-husband had worked on. He figured most betrayed women would have smashed the dollhouse to pieces themselves out of spite so they wouldn’t have one more reminder of their cheating spouse.
“I don’t know why I told you all that,” she said after a moment, her cheeks slightly pink. “I didn’t come here to relive the past.”
Since she seemed eager to change the subject, he decided he wouldn’t push her.
“That’s right,” he answered. “Sage and Anna sent you.”
“I would have come anyway,” she admitted. “They just gave me a push in this direction.”
He found that slightly hard to believe, given his rudeness the last time they met.
“Why?” he asked.
She let out a breath, then confirmed his suspicion. “I... Sage just found out from Eben tonight that you’re leaving.”
He picked up another shingle, stalling for time. He did not want to get into this, especially not with her, though he had been half-expecting something like this for two weeks, since he accepted Eben’s offer.
“That’s right,” he finally said. It would have been rude to turn the router on again—not to mention, Conan wouldn’t like it—but he was severely tempted, if only to cut her off.
She seemed to have become inordinately fascinated with one of the finials on the dollhouse.
“I know this is presumptuous and I have no real right to ask...”
Her voice trailed off and he sighed, yanking his safety glasses off his head and setting them aside. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to be finishing the dollhouse anytime soon.
“Something tells me you’re going to ask anyway.”
She twisted her hands together, her color still high. “You love Cannon Beach, Will. I know you do.”
“Yeah. I do love it here. I always have.”
“Help me understand, then, why you would suddenly decide to leave the town you have lived in for thirty-two years. This is your home. You have friends here, a thriving business. Your whole life is here!”
“What life?”
He hadn’t meant to say something that raw, that honest, but his words seemed to hang between them and he couldn’t yank them back.
It was the truth, anyway.
He didn’t have a life, or at least not much of one. Everything he had known and cared about was gone and he couldn’t walk anywhere in Cannon Beach without stumbling over a memory of a time when he thought he had owned the world, when he was certain he had everything he could ever possibly want.
Since Julia came to town, everything seemed so much harder, his world so much emptier—something else he wasn’t about to explain to her.
Her eyes were dark with sorrow and something else that looked suspiciously like guilt.
“Maybe I was ready for a change,” he finally said. “You just said it yourself, I’ve lived here my entire life. That’s pretty pathetic for a grown man to admit, that he’s never been anywhere, never done anything. Eben offered me the job some time ago. I gave it a lot of thought and finally decided the time was right.”
She didn’t look convinced. After another long, awkward moment, she clenched her hands together and lifted her gaze to his, her mouth trembling slightly.
“Will
you tell me the truth? Are you leaving because of me?”
He shifted his gaze away, wishing his hands were busy with the router again. Unfortunately, his gaze collided with Conan’s, and the dog gave him an entirely too perceptive look.
“Why would you say that?” he stalled.
She stepped closer, looking again as if she wanted to weep. “I’ve been sick inside ever since Sage told me you were taking this job with Eben’s company.”
“You shouldn’t be, Julia. This is not on you. Let it go.”
She shook her head. “I pushed you too hard the other day. I said terrible things. I had no right, Will. I have a terrible habit of always thinking I know what’s best for everyone else.”
Her short laugh held no trace of humor. “I don’t know why. I mean, I’ve made a complete mess of my own life, haven’t I? So why would I dare think I have any right to tell anyone else what to do with their life? But I was wrong, Will. I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
“Everything you said was right on the money. I knew it even while I was reacting so strongly. I’ve thought the same things myself, deep in my subconscious. Robin wouldn’t want me to hide away from life, to sit out here in my workshop and brood while the world carries on without me. That wasn’t what she was about, what we were about. But even though I’ve thought the same thing, I can’t deny that hearing it from you was tough.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He sighed at the misery in her voice and surrendered to the inevitable. He stepped forward and picked up her knotted fingers, feeling them tremble in his hands.
“I care about you, Julia, more than I thought I could ever care about anyone again. When I’m with you, I feel like I’m sixteen again, sitting on the beach with the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen. But it scares the hell out of me. I’m not ready. That’s the bald, honest truth. I’m not ready and I’m afraid I don’t know if I ever will be.”
“That’s why you’re leaving?”
“I’d be lying if I said you had nothing to do with my decision to take the job with Eben. But leaving—trying something new—has been on my mind for some time. I was considering it long before you showed up again, back when you were just a distant memory of a past that sometimes feels like it should belong to someone else.”
He paused, struck by the contrast of her soft, delicate hands in his fingers that were hard and roughened by years of work.
“I guess you could say you’re part of the reason I’m leaving, but you’re not the only reason. I need a change. If I stay here, buried under the weight of the past, I’m afraid I’ll slowly petrify like a piece of driftwood.”
She took a long time to answer. Just when he was about to release her hands and step away, she clutched at his fingers with hands that still trembled.
“Would it make any difference if I...if I were the one to leave?”
He stared at her, taken aback. “Where would you go? You love your new job, Brambleberry House. Everything.”
Sadness twisted across her lovely features. “I do love it here and the twins are thriving. But I have much less invested in Cannon Beach than you do. I’ve only been here a short time. We started over here, we can start over somewhere else.”
That she would even contemplate making such a sacrifice for his sake completely astounded him.
“You can’t do that for me, Julia. I would never ask of it you.”
“You didn’t ask. I’m offering. I hate the idea that I had anything to do with your decision to leave. I blew in to town out of nowhere and ruined everything.”
“You ruined nothing, Julia.”
Whether he liked it or not, tenderness churned through him and he couldn’t bear her distress. He lifted their joined hands and pressed his mouth to the warm skin at the back of her hand.
She shivered at his touch and he couldn’t help himself. He pulled her into his arms, where she settled with a soft sigh.
“You ruined nothing,” he repeated. “If anything, you made me realize I can’t exist in this halflife forever. I have to move forward or I’ll suffocate and right now taking this job with Eben feels like the best way to do that.”
“I don’t want you to leave,” she murmured, her arms around his waist and her cheek against his chest.
He closed his eyes, stunned by the soft, contented peace that seemed to swirl through him. Right at this moment, he didn’t want to think about leaving. Hell, he didn’t want to move a muscle ever again.
They stood together for a long time, in a silence broken only by the sea outside the door and the dog’s snuffly breaths as he slept.
When at last she lifted her face to his, he gave a sigh of surrender and lowered his mouth to hers.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HIS KISS WAS slow and gentle, like standing in a torpid stream, and it seemed to push every single thought from her head.
After their last kiss and the words they had flung at each other afterward, she had been certain she wouldn’t find herself here in his arms again.
The unexpectedness of it added a poignant beauty to the moment and she leaned into him, savoring his hard strength against her.
He kissed her for long, drugging moments, until her knees were weak and her mind a pleasant muddle.
Through the soft haze that seemed to surround her, she had a vague awareness that there a subtle difference this time, something that had been missing the other times they kissed.
It took her several moments to pinpoint the change. Those other times they had kissed, he had always held part of himself back and she had sensed the reluctance underlying each touch, even when she doubted he was fully aware of it himself.
This time, that hesitancy was gone. All she tasted in his kiss was tenderness and the sweet simmer of desire.
She smiled against his mouth, unable to contain the giddy joy exploding through her.
“What’s so funny?” he murmured.
“Nothing,” she assured him. “Absolutely nothing. It’s just... I’ve just missed you.”
He stared at her for a long moment, his face just inches from hers, then he groaned and kissed her again. This time his mouth was wild, urgent, and she responded eagerly, pouring all the emotions in her heart into their embrace.
She was in love with him.
Even as her body stirred to life, as their mouths tangled together, as she seemed to sink into the hard strength of his arms, the truth seemed to washed over her like the storm-churned sea and she reeled under the unrelenting force of it.
He was leaving in three days and had just made it quite plain he wouldn’t change his mind. Nothing but heartache awaited her. She knew it, just as she knew she was powerless to change the inevitable.
But that didn’t matter. Right here, right now, she was in his arms and she couldn’t waste this moment by worrying about how much she would bleed inside when he walked away.
She tightened her arms around him and he made a low sound in the back of his throat and his arms tightened around her.
“Julia,” he murmured. Just her name and nothing else.
“I’m here,” she whispered. “Right here.”
She brushed a kiss against the skin of his jawline, savoring the scent of sawdust and hard-working male. He made a low sound in his throat that sent an answering shiver rippling down her spine.
“You’re cold.”
“A little,” she admitted, though her reaction was more from the desire spinning wildly through her system.
“I’m sorry. I like to keep it cool out here when I’m working, especially at night to keep me awake.”
He paused for a moment, his gaze a murky blue. “We could go inside,” he said, with a soberness that told her exactly what he meant by the words—and how much it cost him to make the suggestion.
A hundred d
oubts and insecurities zinged through her head. It would be tough enough for her to handle his departure. How could she possibly let him walk away after sharing such intimacies without her heart shattering into a million pieces?
But how could she walk away now, when he was offering her so much more of himself than she ever thought he would?
“Are you sure?” she asked.
He paused, taking his time before answering. “I’m not sure of anything, Julia. I only know I want you and this feels more right than anything else has in a long, long time.”
“Oh, Will.” She framed his face with her hands and kissed him again, pouring all her heart into the kiss.
When at last he drew back, both of them were trembling, their breathing ragged.
“I don’t know if I can promise you anything,” he said, his voice a low rasp in the night. “Hell, I’m almost a hundred percent certain I can’t. But right now I can’t bear the thought of letting you out of my arms.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said.
“Not even inside, where it’s warmer and far more comfortable than my dusty workshop?”
She smiled, aware of the cold seeping through her jacket despite the heat of his embrace. “All right.”
He returned her smile with one of his own and she shivered all over again at the unexpectedness of it. “I’m not going to let you freeze to death out here. Come on inside.”
Conan was already standing by the door waiting for them, she saw when she managed to wrench her gaze away from Will’s, as if the dog had heard and understood their complete conversation.
She shook her head at his spooky omniscience, but didn’t have time to ponder it before Will was holding her hand and walking inexorably toward his house.
It had started to rain again while she was inside the workshop, a fine, cold mist that settled in her hair and made her grateful for the warmth that met them inside the house.
She hadn’t been inside his home since that last summer so long ago, though she had seem glimpses of it through the window the day they had gone for ice cream, another lifetime ago.
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