He hurried down the porch steps, and as I got out of the car, he met me with a bear hug.
That’s all it took in my fragile state for me to burst into tears.
I’d emailed him with a heads-up about the broken engagement.
His arms tightened around me, and I inhaled the familiar scent of the laundry detergent he and Mom used as I soaked his shirt with the apparently never-ending supply of water my eyes produced.
“There, there,” he said gruffly.
I felt his hold ease, and as I looked up, surprised he was pushing me away, I saw the reason why. Mom stood, tears in the hazel eyes I’d inherited from her, holding her arms up to take me into them.
And I went.
Collapsing into her and crying now for so much more than what I’d lost in England.
* * *
• • •
Sitting in my parents’ air-conditioned living room on a hot day in Indiana, holding a glass of iced tea, I told myself at least there was AC in the States.
Phil had grabbed my luggage and brought it into the house as Mom and I took our reunion inside. My stepfather had left soon after with some excuse about buying groceries, but I knew he was getting out of the way so Mom and I could talk.
We’d filled the time so far with wiping our eyes and making small talk while Mom brought a jug of iced tea into the living room with a plate of homemade cookies.
“I’ve really gotten into baking since I’ve come home,” she said, offering me a cookie.
Not hungry, I promised I’d try one later.
Homemade baking just made me think of Caro.
To distract me, I blurted, “I’m angry at you.”
Mom flinched, tensed, but gave me a tight nod. “I know.”
“I’ve tried not to be. But I’m angry that your addiction was stronger than your love for me.”
“Oh, Evie, that’s not true.” Her eyes filled with fresh tears.
“I know that rationally. I know that’s not how addiction works. But it felt like that. I can’t change what it felt like. Especially when you lied all the time about it and stole from me. And how do I know that this time it’ll stick?”
“You don’t. I don’t.” She shook her head. “Honestly, I can’t worry about that because it’s counterproductive to fighting addiction. I know that now. I can only try and I am trying.” She shifted forward on her seat, expression filled with remorse. “If you can’t forgive me, I understand.”
I shook my head, my gut roiling at the idea of losing my mom for good now that she was in front of me. “I love you. You’re not your addiction, Mom. I love you. And despite everything I will always forgive you.”
When she broke into hard, shuddering sobs, I wondered how much more I could take. Holding her as she clung to me, I couldn’t remember a time more emotionally wrought than this past week.
I felt like I’d cried a lifetime’s worth of tears.
* * *
• • •
A while later, we moved to the porch swing. It was a typically humid day, but we had the iced tea in our hands as a coolant.
“Has it rained much?” I asked. It usually rained a fair bit in Carmel during the summers. Hence the humidity.
“Actually, we’re having a pretty hot, dry summer. Climate change, I guess.” She shot me a semi-amused look. “Are we really going to talk about the weather? Am I allowed to broach the subject of your engagement? Is it my place?”
“Honestly, I’m all talked out. I could sleep for days. But you’re my mom. It’s always your place,” I assured her.
She smiled gratefully and I noticed how well she really did look. Alcoholism had taken a toll on Mom’s skin. She had more wrinkles than some women her age, but the yellow tinge to her skin tone was gone. She looked healthy and glowing. My pretty, shiny-eyed mom from when she first met Phil was back. Hope, despite all my best attempts to stifle it, flickered to life inside me.
I guess I always would hope for the best when it came to the people I loved.
Roane’s face flashed before my eyes, and those doubts Greer had breathed life into caused a stomach cramp.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I read all the emails you sent Phil, and he’d tell me about your phone conversations too when you were over there.”
“I don’t mind.” I’d assumed as much.
“Your young man . . . Roane . . . he sounds like a good man.”
“He lied to me,” I replied automatically. “And anyway, I didn’t go there to fall in love with some guy.” God, did I sound bitter. “I went over there, telling myself from the start not to get involved with him, because I was there to find myself, to find out what I wanted from life. Not to find a man. I didn’t listen! I didn’t listen to myself and look where it got me. I lost the bookstore and a life that should have been my home. Because of him. Because I gave up my independence for him.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you’ve got it all wrong.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Excuse me?”
“Love isn’t about giving up your independence, and I doubt very much that you of all people gave it up for a man.”
I made a face but she was right. With the exception of not learning to drive there, I’d refused Roane’s help buying the store, wanting to do that for myself. I ran the store by myself with no help from anyone else. “Okay, maybe I didn’t. Entirely. But I still didn’t listen to my good sense.”
Mom studied me thoughtfully. “Do you think that it’s somehow weak to think of a person as ‘home’?”
“No one should rely on someone for that. A home should be something outside of a person. They’re too unreliable. You lose them, you lose your home.”
“Well, I hate to tell you this, sweetheart, but that’s life.”
“Mom—”
“No. That is what it is to be human. We find people we love and they become our home. Jobs, houses, they can all change, but it’s only when we lose someone that we lose that feeling of being anchored to a place. Not a place that’s tangible but a place in here.” She touched her chest where her heart was. “Your father gave me a home when I had none, and losing him, losing that anchor, devastated me. And yes, it made me weak, because ever since, I’ve bobbed around in this nameless sea, dragged under by the waves whenever life gets hard. All because I lost my home when I lost him.
“But what I let myself forget”—she clutched at my hand—“is that you were my home as much as he was. It took me multiple rehab stays and far too much time to realize that.” Her grip tightened to bruising. “Don’t make my mistake, Evie. I see the grief in your eyes. I know that grief. But guess what, my sweet girl, your home is still out there. He’s still out there.”
“How . . .” I choked out. “How do I know he’s my home?”
“You wouldn’t be so shipwrecked right now if he wasn’t.”
“Mom . . . he’s in England,” I reminded her.
Her smile was sad. “I know. This decision isn’t about me or Phil or Greer . . . it’s about you. It’s finally about you, Evie. And all I care about is your happiness. What’s an ocean between family?”
“I think . . .” My stomach churned as I answered. “I think I acted impulsively. Stupidly impulsively and I . . . I was just so hurt and blindsided. But they were right. I didn’t give myself enough time to think it through. I just wanted to run away. And I hurt him. I’ve hurt him too.”
“Do you forgive him?”
The lies still stung and his actions had shaken my trust in him; there was no magic wand for that, other than time. But the thought of never seeing Roane again was unbearable. “I love him,” I admitted. “Being this far away from him scares the shit out of me. When I found out what he’d kept from me, all I kept thinking about was that little whisper in the back of my head that had been telling me since I met him that he was too good to be true. I let that wh
isper become something big and dark. But being away from him . . . I feel like an idiot for leaving over those lies. Those stupid little lies. I remember he told me once that he was so happy with me, he was afraid. Now I get it. It was hard for him to tell me the truth because he thought I’d walk away. It’s difficult to stay mad at someone because they love you so much, it made them act like a moron. So, yes, I forgive him.”
“Then he’ll forgive you too.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“Then he’s a fool. And I’ll be here.”
I hugged my mom tight as we swayed gently on the porch swing, but as the minutes passed, the pieces of my heart that belonged to her began to heal, giving way to those that belonged to Roane. They pulled my mind into the fray of their restoration, until I was already back in England before my body was.
Twenty-Eight
I discovered in the whirlwind of organizing my move to England that Penny had not put the store and apartment up for sale yet.
“I knew, deep down, I’d get this call,” she’d said when I called to tell her I wanted to continue with the purchase. I apologized for messing her around and promised this time I meant to see the sale through.
She’d promised me she wouldn’t tell anyone I was on my way home, and I believed she’d keep that promise.
Roane might not forgive me for running away from us, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t moving to England either way. With a little distance I saw the villagers’ deception with renewed eyes. It wasn’t malice. It was the opposite. Greer was right. They wanted me, an outsider, for one of their own, and in a weird, roundabout way, it was actually a huge compliment.
And I’d spat in their faces about it.
Not that I didn’t still think what they did was wrong, but hadn’t I also meddled with only good intentions in mind?
Ironic, that.
Whether Roane gave me a second chance or not, I was moving to Alnster. I was taking the risk that if we didn’t end up together, the village wouldn’t hold it against me.
As impatient as I was to return to England, I stayed a few days with Mom and Phil because it would be a while before I’d see them again. Then I’d gone back to Chicago to arrange shipment of all my things to England.
Besides, I had to say goodbye to Greer.
And yes, I had enough tears left for that goodbye.
The eventual trip from Chicago to London, London to Newcastle was torturous. I’d never been so impatient in my life to get anywhere. The drive north from Newcastle was even more so. Jet-lagged, smelling of plane, and pale cheeked, I directed the cab to Roane’s estate.
His true estate.
Alnster House.
I needed to see it. It was part of a deceit that had become twisted into something that shouldn’t have been as destructive as it was. What I wanted from the house, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps to alleviate my concerns. To remind me it was just bricks and mortar and it didn’t change who Roane was.
The cab pulled up to the huge sandstone mansion, and my bravery faltered a little. It didn’t do much to reassure me that Roane was an ordinary, down-to-earth farmer.
The house was set back miles from the main road, surrounded by fields. The lawns around the mansion were well kept and rolled for acres before turning into wheat and barley fields.
A dirt road turned into a gravel drive with a fountain in the middle.
An exterior imperial staircase led up to the front door of the grand home.
It was like a smaller version of Mr. Darcy’s house.
“Holy fuck.”
“Is this it?” the driver asked, staring up at the house in awe.
Just as I was about to step out, a figure appeared in the doorway. It was a woman dressed in a conservative pencil skirt and blouse. I waited as she elegantly walked down one side of the stone staircase, the gravel crunching underfoot as she approached the cab.
The driver rolled down the window.
The woman, who appeared to be in her midfifties, asked, “May I help you?”
“We’re looking for the Alnster estate,” the driver said.
“This is it.” She looked at me. “I’m Mrs. Smith, the housekeeper. May I help you?”
I licked my dry lips.
Roane had a housekeeper.
Of course he did.
“I’m . . . I’m looking for Roane.”
Her brows pinched together a little, as if she was trying to place me. “Mr. Robson does not reside here.”
“Do you know where I can find him?”
“Perhaps you would favor me with a name first?”
Wow, Mrs. Smith was old-school posh. I wasn’t sure I wanted to give her my name. I was afraid she’d know who I was and have us led off the grounds at gunpoint.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you.” I tapped the driver on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”
We left the housekeeper staring after us, and I gave the driver the directions to the farmhouse.
Roane had been telling the truth. He really did live there and had a separate life from his parents.
Although my pride was still pricked, my trust still wounded, guilt niggled at me.
I should have stayed.
I should have listened.
Butterflies raged in my belly as the car meandered down the dirt road through the fields of sheep surrounding Roane’s coastal estate.
When the farmhouse and the agricultural buildings surrounding it came into view, my breath caught.
Then I saw him.
He and Bobby were unlatching the ramp from the truck to transport the sheep.
My heart began to pound in my chest, and despite the breezy day outside, my palms and underarms began to sweat. Even the backs of my knees sweat.
“This it?” the driver asked as he pulled to a stop at the house.
When I didn’t answer, he repeated the question.
I was too busy staring at Roane, who had frozen in place, staring back in astonishment.
“Yes . . . but can you wait? I’ll pay you to wait.”
“Sure, pet, but the meter’s running,” he warned.
I didn’t care about the meter.
My legs were like jelly as I stepped out of the cab, my hands shaking as I rounded the hood of the car.
Roane moved away from the truck and took a few wary strides toward me.
We stared at each other.
For what seemed like forever.
I felt like I hadn’t seen his handsome face in months. Those chestnut eyes . . . kind eyes. Roane might have lied about his age and the true extent of his fortune, but he’d never lied about who he was.
He’d doubted me when he struggled to tell me the truth, for fear I’d walk away.
But I’d made his doubts about me warranted by running away.
I shrugged helplessly, quite sure there wasn’t a blameless soul between us. “I’m so sorry.”
Roane blinked, momentarily surprised.
Then he was walking—no, racing—toward me.
His arms closed around me, and I found myself hauled against him as he slammed his mouth over mine in a hard, desperate kiss. It was bruising, ravaging, no finesse.
Yet it was the best kiss of my life.
My fingers dug into the muscles of his back like I was afraid at any minute he might be yanked away from me. He groaned, the sound delicious and thrilling, as his kiss slowly gentled.
Finally, he released me to press his forehead to mine. “Greer got my message to you then?”
Confused, I shook my head. “What message?”
“It took a bit of doing but I managed to track down her number. You wouldn’t answer my calls so . . . I called her yesterday. Asked her for your address in Chicago. She wouldn’t give it, but said she’d let you know I called.”
“But I was
already on my way here . . . didn’t she tell you?”
Roane exhaled slowly. “No, she didn’t.”
Knowing Greer, she’d kept it from him to surprise him, even if it meant leaving him hanging in misery for a few more hours. I sighed, a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob following in its wake.
“Do you forgive me then, angel?”
“I do. Does the call to Greer mean you forgive me?”
Roane lifted his head to cup my face in his hand. Those beautiful eyes of his shimmered as he gazed at me with all the love I’d missed so much these last few weeks. “I think I’d forgive you anything, Evie Starling.”
I opened my mouth to reply, but his next actions stopped me.
He tugged on the neckline of his T-shirt and pulled out a chain. At the end of the chain was my engagement ring.
My vision got watery as emotion thickened my throat.
He’d kept it with him.
Seeing my expression, Roane gave me a chiding smile. “Don’t you realize yet how much I love you?”
“I do,” I promised on a choked whisper. “And I love you. You’re my home.”
“I know it.” He unclasped the chain behind his neck and gently guided the ring down until it landed in his palm. “It devastated me to watch you leave, but I had to believe you’d come back. I had to. There was no other choice for me.” Roane took hold of my hand and placed the ring back on my finger, where it belonged. “There’s no escaping me now, angel.”
“Only you could make stalker talk sexy, Robson,” I cracked to ease the tension.
He chuckled, pulling me back into his arms and burying his head in my neck. We held each other, breathing each other in.
“Meter’s still running, pet,” the cabdriver’s voice called to us.
Roane lifted his head while I buried my face deeper into his chest. “Bobby, can you help the man with Evie’s luggage?”
“I need to pay him,” I mumbled.
“Bobby will get him. We’ll pay him back later.”
I didn’t know how much time passed as we stood in the middle of the yard just holding on.
Much Ado About You Page 29
