The Color of Forever (25 page)

She turned toward me and touched my knee. “Please be careful, Katelyn. I don’t want you to get your hopes up and be devastated if it doesn’t pan out, and then spend the rest of your life alone, believing that he was your one and only true soulmate. He’s likely just a guy who happens to share a few things in common with…” She stopped herself and looked out at the ocean again. “Oh, I don’t know. It is mindboggling, all the links and connections. I had a hard time believing all of it when we first started, but now…” She met my gaze. “What are you going to do?”

I watched
Evangeline
bob gently on the wake of a passing fishing boat, then I fixed my eyes on the distant horizon. “I’m going to go and meet him right now.”

“
Now
?”

“Yes.” I rose from the bench and picked up my purse. “His mother just called him and arranged for me to meet him at his office. I’m going to interview him for a story about his racing schooners.”

Bailey stood up as well. “It’s a perfect cover, at least.”

We started walking back to the car. “If you don’t mind,” I carefully said as we reached the vehicle and got inside. “This time, I’d like to go on my own. I can drop you off at the inn first, then I’ll meet you back there later.”

“Are you sure?” Bailey asked, sounding concerned as she buckled her seatbelt. “It might turn out to be a terrible disappointment. I can come if you want. I could wait in the car or do some shopping.”

“I’ll be fine.” I inserted the key into the ignition and started the engine. “I really want to try and get a sense of who he is, just in case there’s something there. And don’t worry. I won’t do anything stupid. And I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.”

I backed out of our parking space and drove onto the main road. “Oh,” I added, “and there’s one other thing I forgot to tell you. They actually have two sons, and the other one lives in New York. You’ll never guess where he works.”

She stared at me intensely. “No way.”

“Yes. He’s a news director at CNN.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Did you tell them you just applied for a job there?”

“Of course. And they said they’d call him, too, and put in a good word for me.”

Bailey faced forward again. “Well, if nothing else, maybe this whole bizarre escapade will result in you getting the job of your dreams.”

“Maybe so,” I replied. “But first things first. I need to go and meet that boat builder.”

o0o

I sat on a comfortable black leather chair in the reception area of Voyager SeaCraft, flipping through a sailboat magazine while I waited for Aaron Peterson, Owner and Managing Director, to arrive from the factory.

The luxurious head office was located in one of the century-old brick buildings in downtown Portland. The reception room boasted oak doors, mahogany furniture, and a shiny modern chrome chandelier overhead. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected. Although I don’t know what I
had
expected, exactly, because everything seemed to be happening at lightning speed, and I was barely able to keep up with the twists and turns my life was taking from one moment to the next.

When I woke earlier that morning with tingling hands, I never imagined that, within hours, I would be tracking down a man who could very well be my beloved husband from another life.
Would he know it when he saw me? Would he recognize me?

Stop it, Katelyn. You need to control your expectations or he’ll think you’re mad
.

I set the magazine down, and my eyes fell upon the large antique desk where an attractive silver-haired receptionist sat. She was busy working on something at her computer.

Just then, the sound of a car door shutting outside caused me to sit up in my chair. The office seemed to go absolutely still and quiet as I waited. Then the front door swung open, and Aaron Peterson walked in.

Chapter Forty-four

“Sorry I’m late,” he said to the receptionist as he passed by my chair and approached the desk.

He was casually dressed in jeans and a golf shirt. His dark hair appeared windblown. He had to be at least six-foot-two and was lean and fit like an athlete. He was likely in his late thirties. Perhaps forty—but, if so, a very young and fit-looking forty.

The receptionist paused her work and smiled up at him. “No trouble, Aaron. But Ms. Roberts is here, when you’re ready.”

He turned around and faced me, our eyes locked and held, and the whole world seemed to fall away beneath my feet.

It took me a moment to gather my composure as I rose.

“Hi there,” he said, blue eyes glimmering with an infectious warmth and that arrestingly familiar quality I couldn’t put my finger on, which made me feel almost dizzy with rapture. He approached me and held out his hand. “I’m Aaron. You must be Katelyn.”

I placed my hand in his. “That’s right.” I felt an odd shudder in my chest, originating from the grip of his hand. It was as if all the cells in my body had awakened to the physical connection. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“My pleasure,” he easily replied. “I had to come back to the office anyway. It worked out perfectly.” He turned and opened a door in the back corner which I assumed led to his office. “Come on in.”

In an effort to collect myself, I cleared my throat and took a deep breath before I followed him through the door into a massive open space with maple floors, white walls and enormous floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the harbor. There were a few large drafting tables in the center of the room and a whiteboard on one wall, and bean bag chairs in one corner. The side wall housed a large glass cabinet full of books and rolled documents.

“This is our design studio,” he said, gesturing with a hand as he led me to another door at the side which took us into a smaller, carpeted office with filing cabinets and more large windows. There was an antique mahogany desk similar to the one out front.

“Have a seat,” Aaron said, gesturing to one of the leather chairs facing the desk while he sat behind it.

Then we stared at each other for several seconds and I felt completely dumbstruck. He ran his fingers through his thick dark hair.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his forehead crinkling with dismay. “You look very familiar to me. Have we met before?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, deriving immense pleasure from the question as I crossed one leg over the other and tugged my skirt a bit lower to cover my bare knee. “But you look familiar to me, too.” We continued to regard each other wordlessly in the bright light streaming through the windows.

Feeling awkward, I resumed some light conversation. “This is quite a place you have here.”

He seemed to shake himself out of his reverie before he spoke. “Obviously this isn’t where we build the boats. The factory is outside the downtown core. But this is a good space to be creative.”

“Creative…” I dug into my purse for my notepad and pen. “Do you mind if I take a few notes?”

“Not at all.”

I launched into a series of questions about how he got into the business and how many boats he had built. He explained that he started racing dinghies during summers when he was a kid, and by the time he was sixteen, he began to purchase beat-up boats to repair and restore, then resold them for a profit. In his early twenties, he traveled to Europe to work in a number of international boatyards where he completed some apprenticeships.

When he returned home, he joined a boatbuilding firm in Connecticut and was quickly promoted from shipwright to head foreman. Then he took out a bank loan to start his own company and built his first racing skiff. The boat did well in competitions, and soon he had contracts to build others, and the company grew from there—one boat at a time.

“How many employees do you have?”

“Here in Portland,” he replied, “twenty. But our Southampton facility employs forty-seven, and our factory in Norway employs…” He paused. “Sixty-two, I think.”

I looked up. “You have facilities in the UK and Norway?”

He nodded.

“How many boats have you built?”

He sat back and thought about it. “I used to be able to keep track, but now everything moves so quickly. I’d have to check the files and do a count, but I would estimate around six hundred and fifty.”

I wrote furiously, trying to get everything down. Meanwhile I wasn’t even sure what I was going to do with this information, since I was a television reporter and I hadn’t arrived with a cameraman. I was out of my wheelhouse, so to speak. Perhaps this could work out as a freelance magazine article.

“That’s impressive.” I looked up to find him staring at me again, with intensity and fascination.

My cheeks flushed with heat. Lowering my gaze, I set my pen down and swallowed hard.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t stop staring at you. I’m sure I must know you from somewhere. Even your voice sounds familiar.”

I wet my lips and chose my words carefully. “Maybe we knew each other in a past life.”

He chuckled softly and nodded. I lowered my gaze again, shy all of a sudden, my heartbeat quickening. He truly was an impossibly attractive man by any standards, whether we knew each other in a former life, or not.

I knew he was divorced, but he couldn’t possibly be single. Surely some woman had swooped in and snapped him up by now.

Picking up my pen again, I asked him a few more questions about his company and the success of his boats in the racing circuit. He gave me a quick rundown and promised to email me a document that showed the racing stats of all the boats he’d ever built.

Then I heard the receptionist’s heels clicking across the hardwood floor in the design studio. She knocked lightly on Aaron’s open door before she peeked in. “Sorry to disturb you, but it’s after five,” she said. “Do you need me for anything else before I go?”

“No, Martha. Go on home. I’ll lock up.”

She smiled at him. “Great. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I waited until the sound of her heels disappeared into the carpeted reception area, then I met Aaron’s gaze again.

Still, he was watching me with those intense blue eyes that caused a ruckus of exhilaration in my core. Honestly, I felt as if this were the most thrilling experience of my life, as if my whole body was coming alive with sensation and awareness.

“I missed lunch,” he said. “Are you hungry? Maybe we could grab a bite while we continue with this. Unless you already have all you need.”

Feeling flustered and goosebumpy all over, I closed my notepad. “Hardly. And yes, I’m starving.”

The lines on either side of his mouth deepened as he smiled. “Good. There’s a decent restaurant within walking distance of here, if that sounds all right to you?”

“Sounds great.”

He stood up and grabbed his jacket.

o0o

I texted Bailey from the restaurant to tell her I wouldn’t be home for a while, and managed to enjoy my dinner with Aaron without falling into an internal debate with myself about whether or not we had been formerly married, each reincarnated from an earlier century—which still seemed implausible and fantastical to me, despite all the coincidences.

We ordered a bottle of wine and talked about all sorts of normal things, mostly to do with his company as I continued to conduct my interview. Soon, we progressed smoothly and naturally into more personal subjects, and he asked about my life in Seattle.

“I see that you’re not wearing a ring,” he said. “You’re not married?”

The question left me feeling positively overjoyed—to the point where I found it difficult to sit still—because I was flattered and thrilled that he was taking an interest in my personal circumstances.

I wiped the corner of my mouth with my napkin and set it back down on my lap. “I was, for seven years, but now I’m divorced.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he said. “Any kids?”

“Sadly, no—which was part of the problem,” I explained. “I was ready to start a family and I wanted a child, very much, but Mark wasn’t interested. It caused some tension in our relationship, which I guess is what drove him away, straight into the arms of a younger version of me. A woman who wasn’t pushing him to slow down and have kids. She was only twenty-one. And he married her last year.”

Aaron shook his head. “If he wasn’t ready to have a child with you after seven years, he probably won’t ever be.”

I agreed. “What about you? Are you married?”

I didn’t want to mention that I already knew the answer to that question because I’d brazenly asked his parents a few hours earlier.

Aaron finished his meal and set down his fork. “I’m divorced as well. The simple explanation for that is that we got married too young. We really rushed into it. But nothing’s ever simple when it comes to a breakup.”

“That’s true. Any children?” I asked, taking a sip of my wine.

“Two girls.” He reached into his pocket for his cell phone and searched for some pictures. “Elisa is fifteen and Mary is sixteen.” He held his phone out to show me a number of photos. “They’re terrific sailors.”

“I can see that,” I replied, looking at all the action shots of the girls in brightly colored team uniforms on racing boats.

Aaron put his phone away. “It was rough at first,” he explained, “when I first realized it was over, because the girls were very young. But so were we. We were only twenty-two when we tied the knot and we had Mary right away.”