“Maybe a sailing expedition,” he answered.
“Ah. You’re a sailor. No wonder you like the Vineyard.”
Both of their eyes turned toward the horizon to watch as two sailboats seemed to chase after one another, making big rushing circles beneath the glow of the sunset.
“How could you not like it out there?” Xander asked softly. “I suppose you already know that I grew up poor. My father and I didn’t have much. One of the first things I bought for us when I hit it big was a sailboat. Of course, neither my father nor I knew how to sail properly. Even still, we jumped out on the open waves without preparation—”
“Nothing?” Kelli was incredulous.
“I read a few books, to be honest,” Xander admitted. “But those first few hours were terrifying. The winds whipped around us. I felt a fear I hadn’t felt since I was quite young and my father hadn’t returned from one of his odd jobs for many hours. I thought, in those moments, that I would have to find a way through my life alone.”
Kelli was mesmerized at the immense information he’d just given her. She dropped her eyes toward the tablecloth. How could she be so honest with him when the one thing that had brought them together, the hotel, could be a lie, in and of itself?
She was caught in a trap.
But gosh, how she wanted to feel something. How she wanted him to look at her the way he was, like she mattered, like she was the peak of his endless quest for something— just a little bit longer, before he figured everything out.
Say something; her heart urged her mind. Say something that will make him fall for you.
“Is there something you still do that you always did back then?” Kelli asked softly as she leaned closer to him. “No matter how much money you have or where you are or who you are, you always return to this.”
Immediately, Xander’s grin widened. After a pause, he said, “Nobody has ever asked me anything like that before.”
Kelli’s heart pattered. She’d done something good, for once in her life.
“I have an answer. It’s an immediate one. Probably, there are other answers, but this is my answer to you. I still eat Mac and cheese, made straight from the box. It reminds me of long-ago nights when my father decided we had enough money to pool together for a big box of the stuff.”
“The yellow stuff?” Kelli laughed. “You’re kidding.”
“Hand on my heart. I love it. It’s terrible for you and if I ever lean too hard on it, I know these abs I’ve sculpted after so, so many hours in the gym will fade away.”
Kelli let out a small laugh; then, a smile erupted across her mouth. Abs? Were they washboard abs! She was rather athletic herself, but even she had never seen the likes of abs, not even before her babies.
“It would be worth it, though. To drown in a big sea of Mac and cheese and give up on the rest of the world,” he teased. He tilted his head slightly, then asked, “But what about you?”
She tilted her head, locking eyes with him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, tell me a secret about yourself. Something you’ve never told anyone.”
Kelli’s cheeks burned with a sudden flash of embarrassment. In her eyes, at that moment, she was the most boring creature on the planet. What had she fallen asleep watching last night? Another show on HGTV, with Lexi by her side? That’s how it had gone most of the week.
“I don’t know,” she replied with a shrug. “I guess I’m pretty average.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” he told her. He took another sip and swirled the wine around his mouth. “What about if you hadn’t taken over your parents’ real estate business. What would you have done instead?”
“That’s easy,” Kelli said, without pause. “And I already did it. I opened my own little vintage boutique. Clothes, furnishings, antiques and old records, that kind of thing.”
“You never mentioned you had two businesses.”
Kelli loved hearing the surprise behind his voice. Was it really that impressive to operate two? Back when Mike had been around, it hadn’t felt like such an undertaking. Now, Lexi had stepped up to the plate, happy to take over numerous responsibilities at the boutique.
“I miss the boutique more than I can say since I’ve had to switch my schedule around to accommodate the ramped-up need at the real estate office. It used to be my passion to go to old auctions and scour used shops online to find the perfect designer bag from the sixties or a coat with a particular story from a previous owner. Every item I placed in the store seems taken from this other whole life, and every time I walk in, it’s like I’m transported, for just a split second, to all these other worlds and realities.”
As Kelli spoke, Xander’s eyes widened with surprise and intrigue. “I would love to see you in your element like that,” he said softly. “Hunting for these stories. Finding the beauty in what other people threw away long ago.” He then chuckled again as Kelli’s shoulders seemed to loosen, then fall back. “I can’t believe you tried to convince me you were boring, Kelli Montgomery. You little liar.”
Later, after the second glass of wine, Xander removed a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and splayed it across their table.
“I thought you’d get a kick out of this,” he said. “They’re the original plans I’d drawn up for the potential five-star hotel prior to actually seeing the old bones of the Aquinnah Cliffside Overlook Hotel.”
Kelli peered at the fine detail, the beautiful lines but soon burst into laughter at the state of it.
“I told you.” Xander looked up at her and furrowed his brows. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”
Kelli puffed out her cheeks. “Awful isn’t the word for it.”
“Foolish, then,” he pushed as he folded the plans back up. “Now that I’ve seen old photographs of the Cliffside Overlook and dug deeper into the old-world architecture of the place, I feel like a naive architect at best. I guess it was always something of a passion of mine, architecture. But I’d never tried my hand at it before. I don’t think I ever will again.”
As Xander spoke, his cheeks burned red with embarrassment.
“I can’t believe I even showed you,” Xander ran his fingers through his hair, exhaling slowly. “I don’t normally show my weaknesses like that. It goes against everything I’ve taught myself over the years about how to exist in society and how to impress women.”
It was Kelli’s turn to blush. She took a long sip of wine and returned the glass to the table. “At this stage of my life, I’m just impressed with your honesty. It’s really such a rare thing to meet a man like that.”
Again, she felt the punch in her gut from her lack of honesty, but the punch was lighter now, in the wake of the flowing wine.
“Thank you for coming out with me tonight,” Xander said softly. He lifted a hand and placed it over hers on the white tablecloth. Toward the waterline, a violinist played a slow, nostalgic tune, which swept over the heads of the hotel guests and wine bar revelers. Kelli longed to take an emotional snapshot of this moment so that she could return to it in the days and months to come. It was a strange moment of hope and endless relief; it was a reminder that despite all the horrors of the previous years, there was still time for the story to change if only she would allow it.
Chapter Eleven
1943
“He won’t listen to reason.” James paced across the hardwood of the presidential suite so much that he was going to leaving a trail in his wake. His pacing was manic and his eyes alight as his thoughts performed backflips through his mind. “What I’ve offered him is worth far more than he might ever make in his entire lifetime. I have a hunch about his personal takeaway here as the owner.”
Marilyn made an “mm-hmm” noise with her lips as they held together three bobby-pins, all of them jagged and pointed toward the mirror as she styled her half-up, James-approved hairdo. Robert had told her the reason he didn’t care much about money. “The hotel is a passion project for me. I respected Johnson more than I’ve e
ver respected another man. He was more a father than my own father. And thusly, I didn’t wish for the Overlook to be anything more than an extension of his life’s work. I’ve never craved money, never needed to be rich.” Marilyn had felt the words to be as beautiful as poetry. As she’d never had money growing up, money had been a fixation of her father’s; now that she was married to James, money was a symbol of status. The ultimate aspiration of nearly everyone she and James knew was to simply make more of it.
But James spoke to her now without requiring an answer. This was a frequent situation between the two of them. He blabbered on; she allowed her thoughts to trace other pathways. Perhaps this was how marriage was supposed to work. With each passing year, you turned further and further away from one another and only acted as though it resembled a relationship.
“I can’t help it, Marilyn. With every day that passes, my desire for this hotel grows. I feel wild with it. I don’t suppose I will rest until my name is on the deed.”
Marilyn arched an eyebrow in response. He hardly noticed. She then reached for her hairbrush and accidentally brushed aside a handkerchief in the process. Beneath it, a tiny sliver of paper appeared. She quickly lifted the handkerchief to discover that the paper was a folded note, on which someone had scribed the word “MARILYN” in beautiful handwriting.
Marilyn’s heart raced in her neck like a rabbit’s. She quickly placed the handkerchief over the note again to ensure her husband did not see. Luckily, he had buried himself too deep in his thoughts to notice her abrupt motions.
James dropped back on the bed they shared and splayed his hands over his eyes. He was probably hungover, as he’d spent several hours at the bar the previous night with another man from the city, who was familiar with James’ father and had numerous tales from his travels across Africa. Although Marilyn was fascinated with any idea of this other world, she grew annoyed at James’ frequent interruptions, as though, no matter what this man had done, James still yearned to find a way to one-up him. She had retired to her bedroom but remained wide awake for hours, her eyes following the slight crack in the ceiling as her heart had shattered with thoughts of Robert, questioning why she hadn’t seen him that day or where he’d been. Did he have a love interest somewhere? Oh, but why did she demand any kind of attention from him when any time together was outside the bounds of reason— and borderline impossible?
With James on the bed in a perpetual state of feeling bad for himself, Marilyn slowly removed the folded paper and glanced within. Her body blocked any view of this from James, not that he planned to get back up any time soon.
The note read:
Meet me at the stables tomorrow at noon.
R.
There was a scream in the back of her mind. Slowly, she folded the note back up and slipped it beneath the handkerchief. She then placed her hands on her thighs and stared into space for the following five minutes, maybe ten— completely lost in the dream of whatever this was. Approximately thirty minutes later, James received a note from the man from New York, inviting him on a sailing expedition the following morning to depart at nine and arrive in the evening. How had Robert known that James would be away? Or had he somehow arranged this to happen, to steal time away with her?
It didn’t matter.
James asked Marilyn if she would be able to find a way to occupy her time the following day with him gone. Marilyn nearly laughed out loud at the idea. Even without Robert’s idea for their afternoon, she would have enjoyed the day alone— walking the cliffs and reading and writing in her journal. It was another sign of the horror of their dynamic that James assumed she wasn’t creative enough to be alone. That or it was proof that when he was alone, he didn’t have a thing to do and required constant input from outside sources.
A BLACK BEAUTY, THE horse in the center stall, tossed her head with human-like arrogance. Marilyn, all dressed in her riding garb, giggled playfully and then splayed her hand across the horse’s nose. The fur in this area was tender and smooth. The horse calmed and turned her eyes toward her.
“She likes you,” Robert said. He stepped up and stretched his broad palm across the side of the horse’s neck. “It’s a rare thing for her to like anyone.”
“I suppose I can relate,” Marilyn returned.
“Should I take that as a compliment? Or is the jury still out on your feelings toward me?” Robert asked. He turned so that his eyes caught hers there in the dark shadows of the stables. Something strange, a ball of anxiety quivered in the base of Marilyn’s stomach. Was this lust? Or fear? Or a combination of both, a storm apt to drive her wild?
It had been absolutely nothing to leave her room and meet Robert. The real trouble had come in the night when she had again struggled to sleep due to the immensity of her emotions. A storm billowed across her head and her heart, and this was not the first time she imagined what it would be like to leave James forever. It was an impossibility, just a dream. Perhaps she would dream it forever.
Marilyn was suddenly quiet. She watched as Robert saddled the horse and then saddled his own. His motions were quick and precise; his muscles flickered beneath the fabric of his riding shirt. Her fingers itched to feel the strength. When he flashed his eyes back toward her, he said, “You know, I don’t think I’ve seen this horse take to anyone except Mr. Johnson prior to you.”
Mr. Johnson. Again, everything seemed linked to this man, who had apparently died the previous year, just a few years after Robert had taken on the Cliffside Overlook. Sorrow was etched across Robert’s face when he spoke of him. But she knew this from a long-ago era when her sister had died at age three. The only way to keep the memory of her alive was to speak of her. Robert knew this, as well.
They rode side-by-side. Marilyn often went riding with James, times that had always resulted in his riding up ahead of her, striding forth, as though he wanted to prove himself the faster, braver rider. This was far different.
After nearly a mile of riding near the cliff’s edge, Robert ducked them inward and sped his horse up. Marilyn took this as a sudden challenge. She tapped her heels into the belly of her black beauty and then sped up to match him. He wholeheartedly laughed, tossing his head back so that his locks flew with the wind.
“You’re certainly no city girl, are you, Marilyn?”
Marilyn was so grateful that he didn’t use her husband’s last name. She felt no allegiance to the name Peterson.
“Indeed, you are correct. You can take a girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.” She then dug her heels in tighter and picked up speed as Robert’s laughter chased after her.
An hour later, they reached the northern edge of the island, only a half-mile from the center of Oak Bluffs.
“This is my neck of the woods,” Robert explained. “I now live in a little room at the hotel, but just to keep an eye on things during the busier months. When it slows down, I stay over here in town. I help my parents with odd jobs, see my sisters and drink with friends. I then pretend that I didn’t take on one of the biggest responsibilities in my life in accepting this hotel from Mr. Johnson.”
He stopped his horse and slipped off. He rushed around to assist Marilyn with her disembarking, but she popped off without assistance. He whistled, then took the reins of her horse and tied them to a nearby fence. They then took their time walking across the sand, their fingers very nearly brushing as they went.
“Do you regret it, then?” Marilyn asked. She dared not to look in his eyes; she felt that his gaze was as bright as the sun. “Taking the hotel, I mean.”
“That’s a difficult question,” Robert breathed. “Because I adored Mr. Johnson and I would have said yes to anything he’d asked. But now, I hardly sleep. I worry endlessly about the hotel. I pray that I’m keeping it up in all the ways Mr. Johnson would have appreciated.” His smile was crooked then, as he added, “I hope you won’t tell your husband about my hesitations around the place. I wouldn’t dream of selling it to him.”
&n
bsp; “Even if it would take the stress of it off your shoulders forever?”
He shook his head. “That’s not to say it isn’t alluring. I just simply couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
“You have integrity, Robert Sheridan,” Marilyn whispered. “That’s a rare thing in this world.”
“I’d like to carry it forward, even as so many forget it altogether,” Robert returned softly.
They caught one another’s gaze as a wind dragged a wave forth to crash along the beach, mere feet from where they stood. Marilyn was captivated. It was as though the crash of the waves shook through her belly, through her very soul, and pointed out a very strange truth: she wasn’t sure she’d ever fallen in love before. Was this what it felt like— all this anxiety and worry, stirring against waves of passion?
Robert lifted a hand. Marilyn’s eyes closed as his fingers fluttered across her cheek. He collected a strand of hair and pressed it gently behind her ear.
“You wear your hair differently when you’re not with him,” he said then.
Marilyn kept her eyes closed. In the darkness, her other senses were hyper-focused. The salty sea air, the musk of Robert’s skin, the coming autumn— it all stirred through her nose as the sound of the waves roared through the air. She could even hear the thumping of her heart within her ribcage, threatening to break free.
“I wonder if I could kiss you,” Robert murmured then. He said it as though he spoke about the weather or some other commonplace thing.
“Oh.” Marilyn’s cheeks burned with embarrassment. When was the last time James had kissed her? He reached for her in the night, but that was often not for kissing— just for the immediacy of what he needed, which had nothing to do with romance.
Robert bridged the distance between them, but still, he didn’t kiss her. Perhaps he felt it was rude.
“Do you think if I sold him the hotel, that would be enough to satisfy his happiness? To the point that if I were to whisk you away, he wouldn’t notice you left him?”
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