Love Starts with Elle (3 page)

“I see.” Jeremiah dropped the remainder of his bread on top of the last bit of lasagna. “Then your answer is no?”

No, her answer was . . . uncertainty. Elle’s pulse picked up. “I just need a second to process all of this.” She untucked the blanket and walked to the edge of the porch. “Dallas, huh?”

All she knew of Dallas was an eighties nighttime soap opera her mama had watched after she and her sisters went to bed. If they came down for any unexpected reason, Daddy intercepted and dealt with them in the kitchen or living room, but always away from the TV and
Dallas
.

“It’s a great city, Elle. They also have a very thriving, robust art scene.” He came up from behind and embraced her. “I want you with me. I need you. You’re the love of my life.”

Well, if that confession didn’t just warm a girl’s cold feet. Elle turned in his arms. “And you’re the love of mine. But see it from my point of view. I’m engaged for thirty minutes before I discover my future has been determined for me. In my mind, I’ve planned my life here. My gallery is here.”

“I understand. But I have to go where the Lord is calling me, Elle. I hope you believe He’s calling you to be with me.”

She pressed her cheek to his chest, exhaling as he slipped his arms around her back. “Then you must go to Dallas, Jeremiah.”

“And you?”

Elle roped her arms around his neck, kissing the base of his neck. “Since October, you’ve been a face, a voice, a touch on all my days. How can I walk away now? I love you. I want to marry you. I’m terrified, Jeremiah, but if you’re going to be in Dallas, then so am I.”

NEW YORK CITY

The knock on the door didn’t inquire but demanded. “Tell me it’s not true.”

“Okay . . . it’s not true.” Heath dropped a copier-paper box on his desk and peeked from under his brow at Catherine Perry, who powered her way across his office in her blue, retro-eighties power suit.

“Heath, be serious.”

Ah, her retro-eighties power voice. He’d miss her brilliant mind on a day-to-day basis, but not her I-am-woman-hear-me-roar inflections.

“You talked to Rock, I take it?” Heath gathered the pictures from the credenza without reminiscing over the images behind the glass. He’d been packing up little by little since last summer.

“If you leave the firm, even for a few months, it will kill your career.” Catherine whacked the desk with her knuckles. “Rock’s fought for you against the other partners, especially last summer when your life got complicated and they wanted to throw you over. Is this how you thank him? By resigning?”

“I’m not resigning. I’m taking a leave of absence—there’s a difference.” He regarded her with a hard glance. “I can’t stay in Manhattan, Cate.”

“Then move to White Plains, Poughkeepsie, or Connecticut, for crying out loud. Leaving a successful boutique firm like Calloway &Gardner is career insanity, Heath.” She sounded like she did when key evidence wasn’t going her way.

“Right now, I care about my personal sanity. Did you know I was late for the Glendale arraignment because I thought I saw Ava walking down Lexington Avenue?” He stared into the box. “I chased a scared, skinny teen boy with great hair for ten blocks.”

Catherine covered her mouth. “Oh, Heath.”

“Laugh. It’s funny.” Heath shoved the box with a fast pop of his palm. “But also very sad.”

What he didn’t confess to his prying co-counsel was how Ava’s fragrance lingered in the apartment, no matter how many times it was cleaned. Or how he felt claustrophobic and chained up, how hope felt like a dirty little four-letter word.

He didn’t confess to Catherine how he longed to be in a place that held no memories of
her
. Perhaps then he could draw a breath without a million pin-sized flames burning his lungs.

“Healing takes time, Heath. It’s only been a few months.” Catherine straightened the papers lying on the corner of the desk. “Rock said you weren’t leaving right away?”

“Not until March.”

“What about Tracey-Love?”

“I thought I’d take her with me.” He put the lid on the box and walked it over to his closet, where dozen of other boxes waited. Some with case work, others with personal items and records. While Catherine watched, he emptied another drawer into another box and shoved on the lid, anchoring it with a crooked piece of tape. “This is for her as much as anyone.”

“Really? Moving her to Hooterville, South Carolina?”

“It’s Beaufort, and really, Cate, you should open your mind sometime and see what junk falls out.”

As she clucked and fussed, trying to come up with one of her cunning replies, Rock Calloway entered without knocking and plopped into one of the matching leather club chair’s opposite Heath’s desk. “Cate, give us a minute.”

Besides his father, Heath respected no man more than Rock Calloway. The sixty-four-year-old lawyer believed in the rule of law, in finding truth and dispensing justice. Behind his clear gray eyes, he still clung to the idea that right would always win.

“Just left Doc and Tom. They’re concerned about the Glendale case, consider you leaving as a slap in the client’s face and disloyalty to the firm.”

“They can choose to believe what they want, but the truth is I haven’t been an asset in months. Art Glendale would get life without parole if I tried his case.”

Rock’s rich white grin denied his years. “They’d hoped you’d kick in, fight this thing with Ava by throwing yourself into your work.”

This thing?
“Sorry to let them down, but until any of the partners have walked in my shoes . . .”

Rock surrendered with a flash of his palms. “I’m on your side, Heath.”

“Tell them I’ll do all I can on the case before I leave in March.” Heath sat in his chair, facing Rock. His office matched his mood, barren and empty except for the basic necessities.

“I suppose you’re going to tinker with novel writing again.”

“Thought I might use the downtime to write, yes. Maybe come up with a novel that’ll sell this time.” Rock muffled his grin, but Heath caught the humor behind his eyes. “Go ahead, I know what you’re thinking.”

Rock chuckled. “Your first novel was . . . well, I’d read legal briefs more riveting.”

Heath grinned, remembering how he’d passed his first novel,
Remove
All Doubt
, around the office, convinced he’d bested Hemmingway. Made him the brunt of office jokes for months. But since then, he’d studied, improved, finished two more novels, and convinced Nate Collins, his old Yale classmate turned high-powered agent, to represent him.

“This thing”—now Rock had Heath saying it—“with Ava caused me to realize I can’t always count on tomorrow. The sun may rise, but not for me.”

Rock’s soft laugh was one of speculative realization. “You make a point.”

“I rented a cottage by a creek down near Beaufort, South Carolina. Little area called St. Helena.”

Rock tightened his lips and nodded. “Sounds quaint.”

“My grandfather owned a place on Edisto Island in the eighties and nineties. My brother Mark and I used to run the creeks and rivers, building forts, playing soldiers. Granddad’s place is gone, but going back felt like a good place to start over.”

“Heath, Doc and Tom won’t let me hold your partnership for more than six months. Had to fight them for it. Best and worse thing I ever did was pair up with those two after Bill Gardner died. He was a great partner. Either way, I’m not calling the shots alone anymore.”

“I understand, Rock, and appreciate you going to bat for me.”

“I can’t imagine the small-town South Carolina life will suit you for long. You’re a New Yorker, a Yankee, and a lawyer.” Rock arched his foot so the back of his chocolate-brown loafers dangled from his heel. “What about your daughter? Her education?”

“She’s only four, Rock.”

“Are you telling me her name wasn’t put on a dozen elite pre-K lists five minutes after she was born? She should be enrolled by now, ready to start in the fall.”

Heath ran his hand around his neck, stretching to relieve the steady tension. “Geneva and St. Luke’s. But life changed, didn’t it? Took three people and ripped their lives apart. Right now, I just want to piece our lives back together. This move will be good, just the two of us in that cottage. No nanny, no sixty-hour work weeks.”

Rock pinched his eyebrows together. “You’ve only been working sixty hours? Had I known you’ve been slacking . . .”

It felt good to laugh. “This from the man who leaves every afternoon at four with his tennis bag. Yeah, don’t look surprised. I see you.”

Rock owned up. Besides the law, tennis was his passion. “Tell me, though, does the pain get better?”

“The good days are rare, but the bad days are fewer, if that makes sense. I feel in limbo and . . . disoriented. I walk down to the law library and forget what I wanted in there. I pour a glass of milk and find it hours later, untouched. The other morning I woke up, panicked, convinced I’d overslept for a contract-law exam.” Heath motioned to his packed closet. “Ten years I’ve been at this firm and all I’ve accumulated can be stored in boxes.”

“Can’t box all the cases you won. The people you’ve helped, your pro bono work.”

“Nor can I get back all the hours I spent working instead of being with Ava and Tracey-Love.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself. Ava invested in her career as much as you, Heath. If not more.”

Heath reached for a lone yellow pencil lying on his desk blotter. “Yeah, well, I can’t confront her about it now, can I?”

“No, you can’t.” Rock exhaled through his nose and slapped his hands against his thighs as he stood. “If I mentored you right, you have more than enough to live on.”

“Yes, there’s money.” Heath coughed, pressing his fist to his lips.

“Of course.” Rock paused with his hand on the door knob. “Six months, Heath. Remember.”

Heath tapped his forehead. “Got it right here.”

Rock left, shutting the door as he went. Heath stared out his twentieth-floor window. Manhattan had been his promised land thirteen years ago when he and Ava arrived after three years of Yale Law. But today his promised land felt like a barren desert.

A light snow began to fall between the Manhattan skyscrapers. Heath watched the miniscule flakes swirl past his window, knowing they’d melt in the city’s warmth before hitting the ground.

Catherine Perry, even Rock Calloway, had no concept of Heath’s expanding wasteland. If he didn’t leave this job, this city, and this place of memories behind, it would always be winter in his heart.

THREE

GG GALLERY
CLOSED
SOLD

BEAUFORT
March

The empty gallery felt cold and foreign, the bare walls echoing every word, bump, and scrape.

Elle purposefully ignored the big-hole in her chest as she boxed up Geoffrey Morley’s February show, the last she’d ever have in Beaufort, in GG Gallery.

She’d seen the gallery empty once before. The day she bought it. Then her gallery days were beginning instead of ending.

Change was hard. Even chosen change.

Julianne descended the loft stairs with a box in her hands. “Your paints.” She set them on the desk. She picked up a tube and twisted off the cap. “Are they still good?”

“Should be,” Elle said, dragging the last box across the floor to line up with the rest of the packages for FedEx. “Oils last awhile.”

Julianne replaced the cap and dropped the paint back into the box. “You should paint again, Elle. You do have a degree in fine arts, I believe. Studied in Florence.”

“Running a gallery took all my time.” Elle shrugged and walked around to the printer for a piece of paper.

“Are you going to open another gallery in Dallas?”

“Of course.” With a big black marker, Elle wrote on the blank paper, “Desk for Sale. Best Offer. See Inside,” then taped it to the front window.

“Are you sad?” Julianne leaned against the desk, crossing her arms. “About selling?”

“A little, but”—Elle smiled—“the things we do for love.”

“Seems like you just opened this place, Elle.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Julianne walked the box of paints over to the front door and set it with the pile of stuff to be carted over to Elle’s over-the-garage studio. “I can’t see you in big ole Texas, living in the middle of a place with no trees or rivers or creek beds. You’re the quintessential low-country girl. Parties at Bodean Good’s place, spending summers on the sand bar, hosting oyster roasts and lowcountry boils in the fall.”

“Guess I’ll have to learn to barbeque and wear a cowboy hat.” Elle picked up an empty box, not sure what she needed it for, then set it back on the floor. “Love isn’t always easy, Jules. But if Jeremiah is going to be in Dallas, so am I.”

“You don’t think turning thirty isn’t motivating you to jump into a serious commitment too fast?” Julianne kicked at the boxes, avoiding Elle’s eye.

“You sound like Caroline when I e-mailed her the news. She asked the same question. No, I don’t. I’d given up on engagement or marriage before thirty. Burned my Operation Wedding Day plan in the chimenea, remember?” The slight edge in Elle’s voice came from irritation that both her best friend and her baby sister doubted her.