The Mistletoe Promise (16 page)

We walked back to the hotel holding hands. We stopped outside my room and kissed again.

“Do you want to come inside?” I asked.

“Desperately,” he said. He breathed out slowly. “But I better not.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Are you sure?”

“Barely,” he replied. We kissed some more, and then I reluctantly pulled back a little, just until our lips were apart, our noses still touching. “I better let you get some sleep.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you for tonight. For everything. I love my necklace.”

“I love
you,
” he said.

The words shocked me. I pulled back and looked at him. As much as I had wanted to hear those words, I hadn’t expected to. Emotion welled up inside me. Of course I loved him, but he couldn’t love me.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

I couldn’t speak. I kissed him again, then quickly ducked inside my room, leaving him standing there in the hallway, confused. I fell on my bed and cried. I also felt confused, torn by two equally powerful emotions, joy for being loved and fear of being loved, horrified by the truth that he’d fallen in love with someone he didn’t really know and wouldn’t love once he did.

CHAPTER

Twenty-five

It’s been said that “perfect love casts out all fear,” but, in my case, it seems to be the source of it.

Elise Dutton’s Diary

I woke the next morning crying. I had had a terrible nightmare. Nicholas and I had gotten married. I was in an elegant, beaded ivory wedding dress, he was in tails with a wingtip shirt and red band tie and sash. We ran from the church to a car decorated by our guests, climbed inside, and drove off. Then Nicholas looked in the mirror. “What’s that?”

“What’s what, dear?” I asked.

“In the backseat. There’s a box or something.” We both turned around. In the backseat was my daughter’s coffin.

I looked in the mirror at my necklace. It was the most beautiful piece of jewelry I had ever owned. Even my wedding ring paled in comparison. But I couldn’t keep it. Just like I couldn’t keep him.

Nicholas called my room three times the next morning. I didn’t answer. I was too afraid. Then he called my cell phone, which I didn’t answer either. Finally he knocked on my door. “Elise,” he asked through the door. “Are you all right?”

I should have answered the phone,
I thought. Now he was going to see me, puffy eyes and all.

“Elise, are you all right?”

I opened the door just enough to see him. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m okay.”

He looked at me anxiously. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” I said.

He looked baffled. “Nothing?”

“We can talk later,” I said. “After your meetings.”

He looked at me for a moment more, then said, “I meant what I said last night. I do love you.”

My eyes welled up. “I know.”

“I’ll be back soon. We’ll talk. Everything will be all right.”

“Okay,” I said.

He walked off down the hall. I went back to bed, but couldn’t get back to sleep. After an hour I dressed and went out. I wandered around Central Park. I tried to calm myself, to believe his words that everything would be okay, but the fear didn’t leave. It had been with me for so long it didn’t take eviction lightly.

Before you judge me too harshly, consider your own deepest fears—real or imagined. Actually, all fear is born of the imagination, which means that the danger we fear doesn’t need be rational or even real to be potent. Like my fear of snakes.

When I was eighteen I drove my car off the highway into a ditch because there was a snake on the road. It didn’t matter that the snake couldn’t have bitten me through the car. It didn’t matter that the snake probably wasn’t even poisonous
or might even have already been dead. It didn’t even matter that swerving off the road at fifty miles per hour posed a much greater danger than the snake I was frightened of. Fear doesn’t listen to reason. It takes its own counsel.

While my saner self recognized that my fear of snakes was partially irrational, my fear of rejection wasn’t. I’d never been bitten by a snake, but I’d been bitten by rejection more times than I could remember. After all the attacks and abandonment I’d endured since Hannah’s death, my heart wasn’t about to believe that someone might be different. Not even someone as beautiful as Nicholas.

Nicholas came back to the hotel at four, and we went to dinner at a restaurant close by, the Redeye Grill. We started with small talk, which considering where we’d ended the evening before seemed especially peculiar. He waited until we had mostly eaten before he asked, “Elise, what’s wrong?”

I didn’t answer. I was afraid to answer.

“Was it because I told you that I love you?”

I slowly nodded.

He frowned deeply. “And you don’t love me.”

“I’m madly in love with you,” I said.

His look of sadness gave way to a smile. “Then what’s the problem?”

“You can’t really love me,” I said. “You don’t know me.”

“I know you,” he said. “I know that in spite of a harsh childhood you’re kind and giving and sweet. I know that you give more than you take. I know that you’re grateful for even the smallest acts of kindness. And I know that I can’t live without you. What more do I need to know?”

My eyes welled up with pain. I could no longer keep my secret from him. “There’s something you don’t know about me. Something I’ve done. Something horrible.”

He looked at me for a moment, then said, “Does it have to do with Hannah?”

CHAPTER

Twenty-six

I had locked from him the deepest chambers of my fear, only to discover that he had his own key.

Elise Dutton’s Diary

Every part of me froze. When I could speak I asked, “How do you know about Hannah?”

He didn’t answer. I could see my fear reflected in his eyes. I would say that I felt as if I’d been stripped naked, but it was more than that. I felt as if my skin had been flayed, my innermost parts exposed to the world.

“How long have you known this?” I asked. “Did you know before the contract?”

He gazed at me anxiously, then said softly, “I knew long before the contract.”

“How?”

He looked down for a moment, then said, “We’ve met before.”

“I’ve never met you before.”

“Yes, we have,” he said. “But in the state you were in, I doubt you would remember. I wouldn’t have.” After a pause he said, “Do you remember that I told you I worked for the prosecutor’s office?” He paused again, and I was terrified of what he was going to say. “I had been there about a year when we got a call from the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office saying a child had been left in a car and died of hyper
thermia. They weren’t sure whether to arrest the mother. I was sent out to assess the situation.”

Suddenly I knew who he was. Tears welled up in my eyes. “You’re the man who interviewed me.”

He nodded.

I was speechless.

“I knew it was an accident the moment I saw you. And that no punishment the justice system could dish out would be as bad as what you were already experiencing. I went back and convinced them not to prosecute.”

His words rushed through me, freezing me like ice. No, broken ice. I felt shattered and pierced.

“You knew the whole time.”

He warily gazed into my eyes, then slowly nodded.

“Have you been stalking me for all these years?”

“Of course not. A couple of months ago I saw you in the elevator. I knew I recognized you, I just didn’t remember from where. After I got out I remembered.”

For several minutes I was speechless. I had never felt so exposed before. “Why did you lie to me?”

“I didn’t lie to you.”

“You withheld the truth. That’s the same as a lie.”

“It wasn’t important.”

I stared at him incredulously. “It wasn’t important?”

“No,” he said.

“It was to me,” I said. “How could you be so cruel?”

He looked stunned. “Elise . . .”

“I need to go,” I said.

“Elise, please.”

“I need to go,” I repeated. “Now.”

“All right. We’ll go.”

“Alone,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment, then nodded. “All right.”

I retrieved my coat from the coat check and walked alone back to the hotel.

CHAPTER

Twenty-seven

It’s been said that the truth will set you free. But the truth can also bury you. It’s not the hurricane that breaks your heart, it’s the phone call afterward informing you that all is lost.

Elise Dutton’s Diary

The night passed in a strange delirium. Nothing was what I thought it was. My Nicholas, my beautiful, safe fantasy man, was an intricate part of my worst nightmare. He was part of my past, and, whether he had intended to or not, he had re-engulfed me in it.

The next morning Nicholas called me several times, but I didn’t answer. The fourth time he left a message. “Elise, your flight to Salt Lake leaves at two-ten. It’s nearly an hour ride to the airport, so you better leave the hotel by noon. I booked a car for you. It will be downstairs at the curb waiting for you at twelve. It will have a sign in the window with your name. If you have any problems, just ask the hotel attendant for help. Don’t worry about checking out; I’ll take care of everything.

“I won’t be going with you. I’m going to stay here for an extra day so you can have time to think. I’m sorry for hurting you. I didn’t mean to. I would never intentionally hurt you. I hope you can forgive me.” Then he said something I didn’t understand. “Please have faith in me. I understand your pain better than you know.”

Hearing his voice intensified my emotion, and I felt like
I might have some sort of breakdown. I sat on the floor of the shower crying for nearly an hour, the water pouring over me, mixing with my tears and carrying them to the drain.

I was two people, and it was tearing me apart. Part of me wanted to run to Nicholas for comfort. To be held and loved and protected by him. The other half wanted to deny ever knowing him and everything that had happened since the contract. Mostly, I just wanted to crawl back into the dark, safe cave of my previous world.

As I packed my bag, someone knocked on my door. My heart froze. I didn’t want to see him, but I couldn’t stop myself either.

I opened the door, but it was only a woman from housekeeping wanting to clean my room. I told her I’d be leaving shortly. A few minutes before twelve I dragged my bag out of the room. I stole a glance at Nicholas’s door as if hiding the action from myself. I hoped he would be watching for me, but he wasn’t.

The elevator door opened into the lobby, and I walked out to the street. A black town car was waiting at the curb with a sign that read
DUTTON
. The bellman put my bag in the trunk, and I cried as the car pulled away from the hotel.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” the driver asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

He didn’t say anything more.

My flight landed in Salt Lake a few minutes before five. I retrieved my bag, then took a cab back to my apartment. As I undressed I realized that I was still wearing the gold necklace Nicholas had given me. I poured myself a glass of
wine and drank it. Then another. Then another. It had been a long time since I’d drunk to get drunk, but that’s exactly what I was doing. Then I lay down on my bed and cried myself to sleep.

The next day was Saturday. I lay in bed until almost one in the afternoon. I was hungover and my head ached, but that was nothing compared to the pain I felt in losing Nicholas. I didn’t have the energy or desire to get out of bed. Most of all I didn’t have any reason to. I wondered if Nicholas had made it back to Salt Lake. I craved him. I missed him as much as I feared him. I hoped he would call, but he never did. I kept my phone nearby just in case it rang. It never did.