Just Married! (4 page)

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“In Boston.”

“Oh, boy,” he muttered. “Red Sox?”

She nodded curtly and went back to looking out the window.

It occurred to him he really had stumbled onto the perfect woman for him, a woman capable of not being impressed with what he’d done, who could look straight through that to who he really was.

Not that he’d exactly done a great job of showing her that. Maybe he’d even lost who he really was somewhere along the way, in the pursuit of ambition and success.

And maybe she was the kind of woman who could lead him back to it.
If he was crazy enough to tangle with her any longer than he absolutely had to.

With relief he saw the sign he’d been looking for—Annie’s Retreat—and he pulled off the main road onto a rutted track.

The first thing that would need work, and a lot of it, was the road, he thought, and it was such a blessed relief to be able to think of that rather than the stillness of the woman beside him.

Life was just plain mean
, Sam thought, getting out of the car after the long, jolting ride down a rough road. Waldo bounced out with her. He had snagged her skirt, so she had managed to look upscale for all of fifteen minutes.

Ethan, of course, looked like he was modeling for the summer issue of
GQ
, in dun-colored safari shorts that looked like he had taken a few minutes to press
them before he left his hotel this morning. Ditto for the shirt, a short-sleeved mossy-green cotton, with a subtle Ballard Holdings embroidered in a deeper shade of green over the one buttoned pocket.

No wonder she had been downgraded to fiancée! No matter what he said, she was pretty sure it was because she didn’t fit in his world.

“Maybe we should leave him in the car,” Ethan suggested carefully, as if she was made of glass.

But she was all done being what Ethan wanted her to be, and Waldo came with her,
especially
if he didn’t fit into Ethan’s world and Ethan’s plans.

“The dog comes,” she said, “and if you don’t like it, or they don’t like it,
tough.
”

There. That was more like the real Samantha Hall, not like that woman who had stared back at her from the mirror in Sunsational, sensual, grown-up, mature,
feminine.

Despite her attempts to harden her emotions, Samantha could not deny Annie’s Retreat was a place out of a dream she had, a dream that she had been able to keep a secret even from herself until she saw this place. These large properties were almost impossible to come by anymore on this coastline.

It made her remember that once upon a time she had dreamed of turning her love of all things animal into an animal refuge, where she could rescue and rehabilitate animals. Given her nonexistent budget, Groom to Grow had been more realistic, and she
still ended up caring for the odd stray, like Waldo, that people brought in. But looking at this property she felt that old longing swell up in her.

The road ended in a yard surrounded by a picket fence, the white paint long since given way to the assaults of the salt air. Early-season roses were going crazy over an arbor; beyond it she could see the cottage: saltbox, weathered gray shake siding, white trim in about the same shape as the paint on the fence.

An attempt at a garden had long since gone wild, and yet it charmed anyway: daises, phlox, hollyhock, sewn among scraggly lawn, beach grass and sand.

A path of broken stones wound a crooked course to the house, where red geraniums bloomed in peeling window boxes. The path ended at an old screen door; the red storm door to the cottage was open through it. Sam could look in the door: a dark hallway burst open into a living room where a wall of salt-stained windows faced an unparalleled view of a restless, gray-capped sea.

She was here to look at a cottage out of a dream, a cottage she would never own. She was here with a man out of a dream, a man who was as unattainable for her as the cottage.
No matter what he said about her being good enough and trying to impress her.

Ha-ha.

Waldo jumped up on the door, put his paws on the screen, sniffed and let out a joyous howl. A small dog came roaring down the hall, skittered on a rug,
righted itself and rammed the door. She was out and after a brief sniff, the two dogs raced around the yard, obviously in the throes of love.

If only it was that easy for people
, Sam thought. Though she could fall in love with the man beside her in about half a blink if she allowed herself to.

Not that she would ever be that foolish!

A tiny gnome of a woman came to the door, smiled at them from under a thick fringe of snowwhite hair. She opened the door to them, glancing at the dogs with tolerance.

Then she looked at them with disconcerting directness, her smile widened and she stuck out her hand. “Annie Finkle.”

Ethan took it, introduced himself, then hesitated before he said, “And this is my, er, fiancée, Samantha Hall.”

Samantha glanced at him. He was either a terrible liar, or after downgrading her from the wife position, didn’t even want her to be his fiancée!

She decided, evil or not, to make him pay for that. She looped her arm around his waist, ran her hand casually and possessively along his back, just as she had seen in-love couples do. The way her life was going this might be as close as she would ever get, so she was going to enjoy every minute of it.

And enjoy it even more because it made him so uncomfortable.

“Darling,” she breathed, following Annie into the
living room, not letting go of her hold on him, “isn’t this the most adorable house you’ve ever seen?”

“Adorable,” he croaked, and she looked at him and enjoyed the strain she saw in his face. He tried to lift her arm away from him, but she clamped down tighter.

It was a delightful room, completely without pretension. It had dark plank flooring that had never been refinished, and a huge fireplace, the face of it soot-darkened from use. Worn, much used couches faced each other between the huge window and the fireplace. The entire room cried
home.

“I love the floor coverings,” Sam said. “They’re unbelievable.”

Annie beamed at her. “I hand-paint historic patterns on oilskins. I make more of them than I can use, unfortunately. Artie would like me to open a shop, but I’m probably too old.” But even as she said it, she looked wistful. She brought herself back to the moment. “This is my favorite room in the house.”

“I love it, too,” Sam breathed. “I can just see myself sitting in that rocking chair in the winter, a fire in the hearth, watching a storm-tossed sea.” Then she realized it didn’t feel like a game, so she upped the ante to remind herself this was fantasy. “Maybe,” she cooed, “there would be a baby at my breast.”

Something darkened in his already too dark eyes. The set of his mouth looked downright grim as he looked at her. She knew she was playing way out of
her league, and she didn’t mean baseball, but she stroked his back again, even though it made her stomach drop and her fingers tingle.

She should have known not to even try to get the best of him, because he leaned close to her, inhaled the scent of her hair and then blew his breath into her ear.

“Stop it,” he growled in a low tone, and then he gently nipped her ear, just to let her know if she wanted to play hardball he had plenty of experience.

The tingle Sam had been experiencing in her fingers moved to her toes. And back up again.

“Oh,” Annie said. “Babies! And you’d come in the winter?”

“If I owned this place,” Sam said, “I doubt I’d ever leave it.” No, she could see herself here as if it would be the perfect next stage of her life, not the place of change that she had feared, at all.

She could see all her friends gathering here, the Group of Six not disappearing, but expanding as they acquired mates and children, the circle growing in love and warmth. She could sense those unborn children, see them screeching and running on the beach, toasting marshmallows on bonfires at night, falling asleep in parents’ arms.

This house cast a spell on Sam that made it so easy to see her brothers, settling down at last, coming here with their wives and children, raising another generation who loved Cape Cod year-round.

This was the kind of place where friends and
family gathered around the fire on deepest winter nights. Where they played rowdy card games and hysterical rounds of charades, enjoying sanctuary in the love and laughter of friends from the bitter winter storms.

Why was it, it was so easy to imagine Ethan, an outsider to that circle, as being at the very center of it? Why is it she knew that he would slide into the circle without creating a ripple, as if he had belonged there always?

Was it the place that created this sensation of belonging? A longing for things that weren’t yet, but that she could sense on the horizon?

She realized she was imagining a life that had been once, already. She was believing in something that had died for her when her parents had died.

“I would never leave,” she whispered, and then closed her eyes, remembering what that sense of family and community had been like, and feeling deeply grateful that the love of the Group of Six had kept hope alive inside of her even while she denied it.

She opened her eyes when she realized the room was too quiet, and she feared she had inadvertently revealed too much of herself to Ethan Ballard. She scanned the handsome lines of his face and did not like the quizzical expression as he looked at her, as if he knew she had momentarily forgotten it was a game. She forced herself to explore the curve of his lower back with her fin
gertips again, to distract him, and herself, from what had just happened.

This time, instead of trying to move away from her, Ethan looked at her hard, and saw way too much. Instead of moving away from her touch, he pulled her closer into his side, so that she could feel the steely length of him…and the strong, steady beat of his heart.

It was a terrible sensation, because it felt to Sam as if he was a man you could rely on when you were tired of being alone and afraid of being lonely, a man you could rely on when you decided, finally, you just wanted to go home.

Annie led them through the dining area to the kitchen. It was small, cramped and dated, but Sam thought it was the coziest kitchen she had ever seen, with its bright yellow paint, white curtains blowing in the breeze from an open window.

She tried to get back into the spirit of pretense by saying, “Oh, I can just imagine baking cookies for you here, darling,” but in her own ears her voice sounded forced and faraway.

Because she could imagine using this kitchen, even though she had never baked a cookie in her life. It still could become the cheerful hub for all the activity she had imagined moments ago.

“I can hardly wait,” he growled, and then kissed her on the tip of her nose, a playful gesture that seemed all too tender and all too real. It should have
been a warning to stop before she had embedded herself further in the quicksand of the heart. But instead, it only egged her on, even though she wanted to quit doing this. Not to him, but to herself.

Down the narrow hall they went, the narrowness forcing her to let go of him.

But she made up for it.

The back bedroom was tiny and dark.

“This is the room I want for the nursery,” she declared, but unfortunately, as she said it, she could see it, just as she had so clearly seen the future in those other rooms.

And shockingly, so could he.

“I’d knock out this wall,” he said, pensively, “and put in a bigger window, a bay one, with a window seat. We could sit here with the baby, together, in the evenings.”

The picture that conjured up for her stole her breath. She could so easily imagine him in that tender scene. And that picture stole her drive to make him uncomfortable, to make him pay for this farce. She was done pretending. What it was doing to her heart was far too dangerous.

She did not renew her possessive encircling of his waist, and made no comment about how romantic the master bedroom was, though it had another fireplace in it, and a window that faced the sea.

He also became more and more silent, and Sam wondered if he was looking at the house through a
developer’s eyes. If he was, she deduced, a bit sadly, there was probably nothing to be saved.

After a tour of the interior of the house they moved outside. Annie’s husband, Artie, was in the garden, and they met him, and then Annie laid tea out for all of them on a worn outdoor table that faced the sea.

The dogs had worn themselves out and flopped down, panting under the table. Waldo nuzzled Annie’s hand.

“What an adorable dog,” the old woman said gently.

“He’s looking for a home!” Sam said, never missing an opportunity to place one of her charges.

“I can barely keep up with the one I have,” Annie confessed ruefully. “I do love his outfit. Where did you get that?”

“Groom to Grow in St. John’s Cove,” Sam said. “I—”

Ethan nudged her gently in the ribs, reminding her she was beginning to complicate things by mixing up her fiction with her facts. So instead of saying she owned it, she said, hearing the slight sullenness in her own voice, “I love shopping there.”

“I’m going to get a jacket just like that one for Josie!” Annie declared, and Sam thought what a perfect home this would be for Waldo, even as she remembered what she hated about lies. They never stopped. Now this woman was going to show up at her shop in St. John’s. What if she inquired about her fiancé? What if people were listening?

Annie’s eyes met hers over the tea. “I can see you here,” she said quietly to Sam. “I’m so delighted. Finally I can see someone here.”

Artie looked at his wife and smiled, and something passed between them that was so sweet and so genuine that it nearly broke Sam’s heart in two. No wonder she could feel love in this house, no wonder the place conjured visions of domestic bliss.

“We don’t want to sell to just anybody,” Artie said. “Annie’s a bit fey. She said she’d know when the right people came along. People who would love this ramshackle old wreck of a place as much as we have.”