by Sarah Morgan
The deck wrapped itself around the back of the house. Light danced across the wooden boards, creating shadow and shade, and he leaned on the railing, staring out across the dunes to the ocean. The only sounds were the plaintive call of a gull, the whisper of the wind and the faint rush of the waves on sand. From here he could appreciate the beauty of the sunset over the Peconic Bay, his only companions the swans and osprey.
And Lulu.
Her ecstatic barking announced Fliss’s arrival even before he heard the wheels of her car crunch on gravel, followed by the slam of a car door.
Moments later she appeared around the side of the house, Lulu running circles around her feet.
She stooped to make a fuss of the dog, teasing her, murmuring words Seth couldn’t quite hear but which sent Lulu into tail-wagging ecstasy.
With a last tickle of her fingers, Fliss straightened and looked at him.
All sounds faded. It was as if the world had shrunk to just the two of them.
He wanted to reach out and haul her close, but he forced himself to keep his free hand on the railing.
He’d thought it was a good idea to ask her to his home, but now he wondered if a restaurant full of people might have been easier. Or maybe nothing about this meeting was ever going to be easy.
He watched as she took the steps up to the deck where he was waiting.
His heart pounded, but seeing her in shorts always did that for him. These skimmed her thighs and showed off the long, tanned length of her legs.
He lowered the bottle he was holding, even though his mouth felt as dry as dust. “You found the place with no problem?”
“One wrong turn. Almost landed the car in a ditch. You’re hidden away down here. You managed to find the one patch of land that isn’t crowded with summer people.”
“That was the idea. The land borders the nature preserve. This cottage used to be owned by an artist. He converted the top floor into an incredible studio. North light.” He watched the way the sunlight danced over her hair. She’d always had the most beautiful hair. Silver in some lights. Pale gold in others. If the artist who had owned the cottage were still living here, he would have whipped out a canvas and a brush. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You’ve been going to considerable lengths to avoid me.”
She gave a casual shrug. “It’s not the first time I’ve pretended to be my sister.”
“I know you turn hide-and-seek into an art form, but surely even you can’t expect me to believe all that had nothing to do with avoiding me.”
“I really don’t—”
“I saw you, Fliss. That day outside the clinic when you were hovering, making up your mind whether to come in or not. I was on my way outside to talk to you when you dropped to the ground. I was about to dial 911, and then I realized you’d done it to avoid me.”
“I lost my balance.”
If he hadn’t been so exasperated he might have laughed.
Instead he pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose and forced himself to breathe slowly. “Fliss—”
“Okay! I wasn’t totally excited about seeing you. And yes, I snatched the opportunity to get away from Manhattan so that I didn’t bump into you, and then I bumped into you anyway, which just proves that karma is an insensitive bitch.”
He let his hand drop. “Why was it such a big deal? You couldn’t just have said, ‘Hi, Seth, how are things?’”
“If I could turn the clock back that’s probably the approach I’d take, but at the time I thought I’d killed your dog and then I heard your voice and you sounded—” she snatched in a breath “—and I saw you and you looked—It flustered me.”
Flustered was good. He could live with flustered.
Her gaze slid to his, and he saw the flicker of something there before she looked away again.
“So you decided to pretend to be Harriet.”
“If I’m honest, there wasn’t a whole lot of planning behind that strategy. It was more of an impulse. A conditioned response.”
“The conditioned response being to avoid me?” He waited, refusing to allow her to dodge it and finally she scowled.
“So I wasn’t comfortable seeing you. Turns out I’m clueless when it comes to ex etiquette.”
“That exists?”
“I don’t know! But I didn’t know how to handle it.”
“So you pretended to be Harriet, which made it a different conversation.”
“That was the idea. A different conversation was exactly what I wanted. Goal achieved.”
“But you’re here now. As yourself. And this time we’re having the conversation I want.”
“Yes. So let’s get it over with.” The expression on her face suggested she was about to be dragged off to a torture chamber. “If there are things you need to say, although I can’t imagine why there would be after all this time, then you need to say them. Go right ahead.”
You need to say them.
What he really wanted was for her to talk to him, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen in an instant. You couldn’t change the habits of a lifetime overnight, and Fliss had been keeping things to herself for her entire life. He needed to be patient. And persistent. Last time he’d given up and walked away. This time he wasn’t doing that. Not until he’d explored what might have been. If losing his father had taught him one thing it was that life was too precious to waste a single moment doing things that didn’t matter with people who didn’t matter.
Fliss mattered to him. She always had.
He knew that now. What he didn’t know was why it had taken him so long to follow up on it. There had been plenty of reasons why walking away from it had seemed like the right thing. They’d been too young, it had all happened too fast—the list was long, and topped off by the fact that she’d never returned his calls. Nothing on that list had explained why he hadn’t been able to leave her behind.
She hovered, wary, her weight on her toes. She reminded him of a deer, alert for danger, ready to run at a moment’s notice.
And he wasn’t going to give her a reason to run.
“Do you want a tour?”
“A tour? Of your house?” She relaxed slightly, as if she’d been given a reprieve. “Sounds good. Great idea.”
“You’re my first visitor, apart from Chase, and he doesn’t count given that he’s had eyes on the place every week since the project started.”
“Have you spoken with him?”
“Yes. He flew back last night the moment I called him.”
“The advantage of helicopter travel.”
“He’s with Matilda in the hospital, but I think she’ll be coming home today.”
“I wondered. I would have texted her, but of course she dropped her phone. And I didn’t want to get in the way by showing up at the hospital.”
He wondered if that was all it was. The image of her face when he’d walked into the room and seen her with Matilda’s baby was welded into his brain.
“I doubt they would have minded.” He picked up the empty beer bottle and strolled through to the kitchen. “He’ll be calling you. To say he’s grateful would be an understatement.”
“Why would he be grateful? I didn’t do anything.”
“You did plenty. If it weren’t for you, Matilda would have been on her own.”
“Hero takes the credit for that. He came to find me on the beach. That dog is supersmart.”
“You stayed with Matilda through the whole thing.”
“Believe me, if there had been anyone else within shrieking distance I would have been out of there.” She made it sound like a joke, but he knew she wasn’t laughing.
“But you stayed. And it must have been hard for you.” He was probably the only one who had any idea how hard. He could imagine how it must have ripped open wounds she’d carefully sealed and exposed feelings she’d kept hidden.
“Not hard at all.”
He thought back to the way
she’d sobbed on him the night before and felt a rush of frustration. “Fliss—”
“Obviously I don’t know anything about delivering babies, but Matilda seemed to manage that part just fine by herself. I was little more than a cheerleader. All I had to do was say, ‘Yay! Go you! Wow, a baby!’ That kind of thing.”
It was like trying to crack his way through a reinforced steel wall. She had defenses that would have been the envy of any security force in the world.
The fact that he understood her reasons didn’t make it easier to handle.
“So last night on the beach when you were drenching my shirt, sobbing as if your heart was going to crack—which part of cheerleading was that?”
“Witnessing the beginning of a new life is an emotional thing.”
Last night he’d caught a glimpse of the feelings she was keeping locked inside, and it hadn’t been pretty.
He wanted to ask if she’d slept, if she’d shed more tears, but the answer to that was visible in the bruised shadows under her eyes, and he knew that the emotional events of the night before had stolen her sleep in the same way they had his.
She paced around the kitchen, admiring, touching, and gave a low murmur of approval. “Nice.” She ran her hand over the countertop and glanced at him. “Chase did this?”
She looked exhausted, but he decided there was no point in asking more questions she would evade.
“Not personally. He has a good team.” He opened the fridge, forcing himself to be patient. Haste had destroyed the fragile roots of their relationship last time. He wasn’t going to let that happen again. “Drink?”
“Please. Something cold. Nonalcoholic, as I’m driving. I need to keep my eye out for dogs who lie down in the middle of the road.” She gave Lulu a pointed look. “How do you train a dog to play dead? Maybe that’s a way we could expand. Dog training.”
“You’re looking to expand?”
“Yes. We practically own dog walking on the east side of Manhattan. I’ve decided we need something else. I was thinking maybe dog grooming, or even boarding.”
“Do you have premises?”
“No. That’s the downside.” She shrugged. “But also the upside because I’m tired of falling over paperwork in our apartment.”
“You share with Harriet?”
“Yes, of course. We live in Manhattan. An apartment to yourself is the stuff of dreams. And we’re in tight quarters. Harriet hates paperwork or anything to do with accounts, so she pushes it into a corner and pretends it isn’t there. Before I can process it, first I have to find it.”
“You can’t run the business online?”
“A lot of it is online, but there’s still paper.”
“Do you have to expand? Why not just keep the business small?”
“Now you’re starting to sound like Harriet. She’s happy the way things are. I handle the accounts and the clients, she handles the animals and the dog walkers. So maybe dog training might be the way forward. Heaven knows, we’d have enough clients who would benefit.”
“Do you ever refuse to walk a dog?”
“In theory, but in practice I’ve never met a dog Harriet couldn’t handle. She’s a wizard when it comes to animals. That’s probably another reason why we should expand our offerings to include training.”
“But Harriet couldn’t train every dog.”
“Are you trying to burst my bubble?”
“No. I’m presenting a strong counterargument. If you can’t challenge me, maybe it’s not a sound business proposition.”
“The weakness is in needing new premises. That increases our fixed costs and our risk.”
“You’ve never been afraid of risk.”
“No, but this business means a lot to me, and it’s not just mine. It’s Harriet’s, too. I know how much this job means to her.” She glanced at him. “She started off studying veterinary medicine just like you.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I think you inspired her. But she hated the way some owners behaved toward their pets. After this one guy told her there was no way he was going to throw away good money having his dog put down when he could die for free if left alone, she lost her temper.”
“Harriet?”
“You don’t believe me?” Fliss’s eyes gleamed. “You want to see my twin’s steely side? Mess with an animal.”
He took a can of soda from the fridge. “What happened?”
“She gave up. Probably the best thing that could have happened, although she didn’t see it at the time. I’d just finished business school, so I decided we should do something together. I did all the things she hated—paperwork, phone calls, face-to-face with strangers, that kind of thing. She did all the things she was great at—dealing with difficult animals, recruiting dog walkers, convincing clients that no one cared about their pets more than we did. And it was true. We were doing pretty well, getting by, and then about a year ago Daniel heard about this start-up. Urban Genie. Three women offering concierge services. Turns out there’s a lot of demand for dog walking. He recommended us. We’ve had almost more business than we can handle ever since.”
She’d set up the business as a way of protecting her sister.
“And now you want to be even more busy.”
“What can I say? Making money, growing, being a success—it gives me a thrill. Winning new business is my adrenaline rush.” She paused by the island, looking at the neat heaps of chopped vegetables. “When you said you’d take care of dinner, I wasn’t expecting this. What would you have done if I hadn’t showed up?”
“Eaten alone. Put some in the fridge for tomorrow. Maybe invited the neighbors.” Dealt with his disappointment and frustration. “I’m a Carlyle. We like entertaining.” He handed her the Coke. “Do you want a glass?”
“No, this is good. Thanks.” She snapped open the can and drank. “You have neighbors? I didn’t see any. The nearest house is back up the lane.”
“The Collins family. He runs a boat business, she’s a teacher. Two children, Susan and Marcus. And they keep two ponies.”
“Wow. You’re a real pillar of the community, Dr. Carlyle.”
“That’s the point of living somewhere like this. It doesn’t have to be anonymous.”
“I like being anonymous.”
“Why?”
She took a slug of her drink and watched while he cooked. “It’s easier when people don’t know your business. I walk into a store in Manhattan and no one knows who I am. I like that. Maybe it’s just me. I prefer to keep my life private from strangers.”
She preferred to keep her life private from everyone.
Including him.
“Sometimes it’s good to have connections. And everyone who isn’t family is a stranger until you let them in.” He cooked without consulting a recipe, confident enough in the kitchen to be able to keep the focus on her.
“As we both know, I’m not great at letting people in. Dogs, no problem. Humans—that gives me more of a problem.” It was the first time he’d heard her admit it.
“Not everyone is out to get you.”
“Maybe not.” She scanned the food. “So all this food is just for us? Because it looks as if you’ve invited the whole of the Hamptons.”
“I may have overcatered. It’s a family trait.”
A smile flashed across her face. “I remember being in your kitchen with about eighteen other people. Your mom didn’t even flinch. Your house was always full of people, and the food kept coming.”
“Blame the Italian blood. Food has always been central to family life in my house.”
She eyed the food on the countertop. “And you’re continuing that tradition. I didn’t know you liked to cook.”
There were a lot of things she didn’t know about him and plenty he didn’t know about her, but this time he was determined things were going to be different. Last time they’d rushed their way through most of those small, subtle things that fed a relationship and made it grow and deepen.
They’d bypassed some aspects altogether in their race to satisfy raw sexual attraction.
It was like having arrived at a destination without having taken the time to enjoy the journey. Only now was he realizing how much he’d missed.
If he’d understood her better, would they still be together?
“My mother always insisted that we sat down at the table at least once a day. Breakfast could be taken on the run, but dinner never was. It didn’t matter what we were doing, we were all expected to be there. Eating those meals, talking over food, was something that glued us together as a family. If it hadn’t been for that we might not have spent time together.” And he instantly felt a flash of guilt because the one thing he did know about her was that mealtimes in her house had been an incendiary affair. “I guess that happens a lot in a family with divergent interests. Given the choice, Bryony would have spent her whole time at the stables with the horses and Vanessa would have been with her friends.”
“How are your sisters?”
“Bryony is teaching first grade and loving it, and Vanessa is married and determined to see everyone else in the same blissful state.”
She smiled. “You two used to fight all the time.”
“Still do.” He decided not to elaborate on what the biggest cause of their discord was. “We’re not as close as you, Dan and Harriet.”
“And your mom?” Her gaze skated to his. “Losing your dad must be hard on her.”
“It is. They were together for more than forty years. She’s lost her soul mate. But she’s doing better than she was. Having grandchildren helps.” He saw the question in her eyes and realized how much of each other’s lives they’d missed. “Vanessa has two children. A girl and a boy, age six and eight. Vanessa works part-time as an accountant and Mom takes care of the kids when they’re not at school. I reckon it helps her as much as it helps my sister.”
“So you’re Uncle Seth. And I bet you’re good at it.” She leaned against the counter. “Beach games, hide-and-seek, you’re a hands-on type of uncle. Six and eight. I’m guessing lots of sport. Taken them surfing yet?”
“As it happens, yes.”
“I bet they loved it.”
