Wandering Heart (9781101561362) (28 page)

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said.

“You should,” he agreed.

He stared at her a moment, then pulled her close and kissed her, softly at first, then more intensely. Charlotte melted against his strong body, feeling swept away. The same way she’d felt carried off by the ocean current … and just about as powerless to resist, too.

She wasn’t sure how long they stood holding each other. Finally, she lifted her head and leaned back. She cupped his cheek with her hand. His stubble felt rough against her palm. He really was so wonderful and dear to her. She had to step away now, or she never would.

“What now? Do you need to go back to the inn?”

She definitely didn’t want to. She wanted to stay here all night, sitting and talking with him. Asking him every question she could think of, hearing him talk and laugh.

But she could already feel the pull of responsibility drawing her back. People were depending on her. She had already wasted two days of filming. She had to go back right away.

“Yes, I do. I’d better call Judy and tell her where I am.”

He looked very unhappy but not surprised. “I can take you. You don’t have to call anyone.”

“No, it’s okay. You’ve helped me a lot today. I don’t want to put you out,” she said quickly.
It will be so much harder that way,
she nearly added aloud.

She picked up her cell phone and sent Judy a text, telling her she was in Thompson’s Bend and gave her Colin’s address. “They must think I’m really nuts for running off that way today,” she said as she tapped out the message. “I guess I panicked. It was just a reporter, but the whole thing pushed my buttons. I’ve had so many bad experiences with the media.”

“I understand that part, Charlotte … I just wonder if there’s something you’re not telling me,” he said slowly.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you seemed so afraid of that reporter and now, so relieved. As if you dodged some kind of bullet. Was there something you thought he knew about you? Something you need to conceal from everyone?”

Charlotte felt her pulse race. She tried to look him in the eye but couldn’t. He knew she was hiding something. He was smart about people, highly observant. A born writer, she thought. Could she tell him? She would feel so relieved telling someone. But she was so
afraid. Right now he thought she was wonderful. She could see it in his eyes. He might not ever look at her that way again. He might decide she was selfish and cold, out for herself and unfeeling about other people’s pain—even her own family’s.

“There is something,” she said finally. “I wish I could tell you. But I can’t.”

Colin ran a hand through his hair and gave her a look that was both sympathetic and exasperated. “If you can’t tell me, I can’t help you. If you can’t be honest with me, how can we really know each other?”

Charlotte stared at him, stunned. She knew what he was asking her and knew everything between them rested on this moment, on her answer.

“I want to tell you,” she repeated. “But it’s so … complicated. Please don’t judge me, Colin. Please don’t make everything between us come down to this. You don’t know the story. You don’t understand.”

He didn’t answer her for a long moment. “You’re right. I don’t understand you. I’m trying to, but you won’t let me.”

“Colin—”

“What I do understand,” he went on, “is that it’s important to be honest with each other if you want something real, something serious. I want something more than a fling with you, Charlotte. I guess you just don’t trust me that much. I guess you don’t see a real future for us, do you?”

She suddenly understood something about her life, a truth that had eluded her. All these years, she wondered why she could never find a good relationship with a man. She had never met anyone like Colin, that was true. No one had ever made her heart race the way he could with just a smile. But he had just summed up a deeper
problem. As long as she walked around with this secret inside, never letting anyone close enough to see the real Charlotte Miller, she would always feel alone. She would always keep anyone who cared about her at arm’s length. She would never be free to fully love or know happiness.

And if she told him the truth, what then? He would be stuck in the same trap, forced to keep the secret, too. Was that even fair to do to someone?

“Colin …” She reached out her hand to him, but he didn’t respond. “This is so hard. It’s not that I don’t trust you. And it’s not that I think that you’re just a fling. That’s not the way I feel about you at all.”

He was the only one she could see in her future. The only one she really wanted beside her.

“It’s all right. You don’t have to say anything else. You don’t have to explain it to me.”

He stood up and touched her cheek with his hand, and she thought he might kiss her. Instead, he turned and walked to the back door. “All things considered, it’s probably better if I’m not even here when they come to pick you up. Good luck, Charlotte,” he said, pulling open the back door. “Good-bye,” he said finally.

Charlotte was so stunned, she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t believe he was just walking out on her this way. She ran to the door and followed him outside. “Colin? Please don’t go like this. Come back. Can’t we talk a little?”

Colin was walking down the gravel drive next to his cottage. He didn’t turn around to look at her. There were only a few lights on the street, old-fashioned gas lamps that gave off a soft glow in the damp night air.

She watched him walk away and disappear into the darkness.
Then she covered her face with her hands and began to cry. She was shaking with sobs and couldn’t stop herself. She had never imagined her time with Colin ending this way, on such a sad, bitter note.

But it had to end, one way or another,
she reminded herself.
In time, I’ll look back and know that it was all for the best. It’s better this way. It would be much harder later—when I would be even more in love with him.

She went back inside and waited by the front window. The long black car soon appeared and parked in front of the cottage. Charlotte ran out and jumped in the backseat. The door locked with an automatic click.

“Are you all right, Ms. Miller?” the driver asked.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Charlotte replied, though she felt anything but. She leaned back in the plush seat and sighed. Back into her plush world, a movie star again.

The car pulled away and she looked back at Colin’s cottage with longing. It was as if she were leaving another world, a perfect world she’d made up in her imagination. A place she could only return to now in her dreams.

I
guess all that rain was good for something,” Audrey said. “Check out these tomatoes, Rob. They’re positively monstrous.”

“It’s the Attack of the Giant Tomatoes, all right.” He stepped forward to help Audrey with the overflowing bushel she carried from the garden.

“I’m going to cook one of these big boys for dinner, instead of a roast chicken,” she announced.

She was teasing, but not entirely. The bounty of their summer garden made it easy to go vegetarian. Audrey had collected a lot of recipes for savory pasta dishes and stews with all-vegetable ingredients.

“Where do you want the rest of these?” he asked her.

“Over by the spigot. I’ll rinse them off and put them in the shop.” Fridays through Mondays were usually the four busiest days in the shop during the summer, but they’d had a lot of customers today, too, though it was a Tuesday. It was just another sign of summer
winding down, the final wave of summer visitors, the ones who left their vacations for the very last weeks of August. There would be a steady stream of visitors to the island—and to her shop—from now until September.

“I think we should put up the roadside stand, too. Until the end of the season,” she said as they walked to the house. “We can make some money from that garden patch this year. It’s going to be a huge harvest.”

“Maybe those fences finally kept the deer and rabbits from eating half of it.”

“Maybe,” Audrey agreed as she rinsed the dirt off a pile of tomatoes and carrots. “Millie helped, too,” she added.

The dog was nearby, as usual, and wagged her tail. Audrey flipped her a carrot and she happily crunched it down.

“She loves carrots,” she told Rob as he placed the clean tomatoes in a wide-slatted wooden crate. “They’re good for her, too. I looked it up on the Internet.”

Rob smiled as he sorted out the tomatoes. “Sounds like you’ve been studying those dog sites pretty carefully, Audrey. You’re becoming an expert.”

“I just want to know how to take care of her and train her. Neither of us knows much about dogs,” Audrey reminded him. But she did feel found out. The time she spent lately reading up on dog care was a pleasant distraction from her endless research of their fertility problem.

Audrey’s cell phone sounded. She wiped her hands on her jeans and fished the phone from her back pocket. She was expecting a call from Liza. But she saw it was a Boston number, then quickly realized it was the fertility specialist. She glanced at her husband. “It’s Dr. Barnes. Maybe he has the test results.”

Rob dropped a tomato and came toward her. “Answer it, honey. Before he hangs up.”

Audrey yanked off a garden glove and tried to pick up the call. Her fingers fumbled. Finally, she hit the right button. “Hello? Dr. Barnes?”

“Hello, Audrey. I’m just getting in touch about the tests you and your husband took last week. When can you come in to see me, so we can go over the results?”

Audrey glanced at Rob and nodded. “We’re so glad you have the information, Doctor. We’ve been dying to hear how the tests turned out, but it’s hard for us to get to Boston. This a really busy time at our farm,” she added, exaggerating so much that Rob made a face. “And I really can’t stand the suspense,” she added honestly. “Can’t you please just tell me what you found out?”

“I’m sorry, Audrey. I’m sure you’re both anxious to know. But it’s best if you come in. There’s a lot of information here, and it’s not just one issue—”

“Doctor Barnes, please? I’m a nurse. I get this stuff. What if we agree to come in, but you just answer one question: What’s the bottom line? Can we have a baby, or not?”

Rob put his arm around Audrey’s shoulder and she put the phone on speaker so he could hear everything. The doctor didn’t answer for a long time, and Audrey worried that she had disconnected him by accident.

Then they heard the doctor sigh. “I suppose I can make an exception this once. Again, it’s not that simple to answer unequivocally, but since you want me to boil it down, I’d have to say that you have a low probability for unassisted conception. However, you’re also a candidate for quite a few treatment options, including in-vitro fertilization.”

Audrey felt as if a stone had lodged in her chest, even though she had expected this news. She glanced at Rob. He stared straight ahead, his jaw tight.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Audrey said finally. “I appreciate your honesty. We’re outside now, working. I’ll call your office tomorrow and make an appointment to talk to you in person about all this.”

“I know this seems like the worst possible news,” the doctor said, his voice softer. “But it really isn’t. There are amazing medical interventions that have helped millions of couples like you and your husband have beautiful, healthy babies. Don’t despair. We’ll get there.”

“Thank you, Dr. Barnes. We’ll try to remember that,” she promised, though she knew it would be very hard. She stuck the phone back in her pocket and turned to Rob. “Well, that’s it. We’ve got our answer. In a way, it’s a relief. I was going crazy waiting to hear, weren’t you?”

Rob shook his head. “It’s certainly not the news we were hoping for. But I suppose it’s better to know than not know.” He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her close. “Don’t worry, honey. We’ll figure this out. We’ll have a baby.”

She glanced up at him and forced a smile. “I know we will. It’s just that now that we have the answer, it’s hard to face it.”

To face that they had a long ordeal ahead of them—and might need to give up the farm. That’s what it always seemed to come down to, she meant. But it was too soon after this big news to get into the conversation again. Rob seemed to feel the same way. “I’ll finish this later. Let’s just go in now and make dinner. It’s getting late and we’re both tired.”

They started off toward the house, their arms around each other. Millie dashed out from behind the barn, barking and wagging her tail.

“We’re all going inside now, Millie. We’re right behind you.”

Millie stood up on her hind legs and took a few steps backward in a little dog dance, looking at Audrey as if to say, “Hey, look at this. Pretty good, right?”

“I guess she’s happy we’re going in. She knows you’ll feed her dinner,” Rob said.

Audrey nodded. Secretly, she was sure the dog sensed their sadness and was trying to cheer them up … And she wanted her dinner, too, of course.

Millie ran over and trotted alongside, her fur rubbing on Audrey’s bare leg. Audrey leaned over and patted her head, receiving an adoring look and a lick in answer.

Millie, what would I do without you?
she wondered.

I
T
was just after seven on Wednesday morning when a sharp, quick knock sounded on Charlotte’s door. “Come in.”

Meredith opened the door a crack and stuck her head in. “The car will be here any minute. Do you want me to take anything else down?”

“I’m just closing my carry-on. I can handle the rest, thanks,” she added in a tone that suggested she wanted to be alone.

Meredith nodded and disappeared. Charlotte walked back to the bed and put the last-minute items into her bag and zipped it.

She would miss this place. There was definitely something magical about it. She’d been on the island exactly two weeks, but it felt much longer.

Luckily, the last few days had flown by. The crew had been working nonstop since Monday morning, making up for the time lost when she disappeared. Miraculously, they finished right on schedule, Tuesday night.

Charlotte had been nervous when she returned on Sunday night, not knowing what to expect. But she apologized and admitted she’d overreacted to the aggressive reporters. Renee had also smoothed the way. Mike and Judy seemed to understand and apologized for the failure of the film’s security team. The reporter should have never gotten a foot on the inn’s property, they agreed.