FLISS STARED AT HIM, mute. He’d loved her?
No, that wasn’t possible.
She remembered something he’d said that night she’d gone to his house for the first time.
Maybe I didn’t want to let you go and the baby provided a convenient excuse.
“That’s not true. It can’t be true.”
“I told you. I said those words to you.” There was a note of frustration in his voice. “You know I did.”
“You said them when you knew I was pregnant. Not before.”
He cursed under his breath. “Then that was bad timing on my part, but it didn’t make the words any less than the truth.”
“But can you understand how it might have seemed to me? I tell you I’m pregnant, and you tell me you love me and that we should get married?”
He was silent. “Yeah,” he said finally. “I can see that.”
“I thought you were saying it to make me feel better about the fact I’d trapped you.”
His mouth tightened. “I don’t think communication was the best feature of our relationship, but we’re going to change that.”
She felt her throat thicken and her eyes sting.
He’d loved her? He’d truly meant those words?
Oh God, if that was true then she’d thrown that away. She’d held the very thing she wanted in her hand, and she’d crushed it without ever knowing it could have been hers.
She sniffed and gave him a little push. “Your timing sucked, Dr. Carlyle.”
“It did. It definitely did. But my timing has improved with maturity.”
“It’s too late. Whatever the truth was back then, it’s history. I’m not good at relationships, Seth. All that opening up and trusting—that’s not me. I want to, but I can’t.”
“You can. All you have to do is trust me. And this time I’m going to prove to you that you can. I’m going to prove I’m not your father. I didn’t spend enough time dealing with those issues. I didn’t understand how deeply everything he said had affected you. I judged your actions based on my own experiences of family, not on yours.”
She felt the warmth of his hand stroke her back. “You make it sound so easy, but it isn’t.” Her voice was muffled by his shirt. “I’m not good at laying feelings out there.”
“Because you’re afraid someone is going to tread all over them in heavy boots.” He smoothed her hair. “I get that. And we’ll work with it.”
“How?”
He eased her away from him. “Same way you get better at anything. Practice.”
“You want me to practice telling you things about myself? I’m five-four, have a black belt in karate and bench-press one-twenty.”
“Those are facts. I want feelings. Tell me how you’re feeling right now.”
“A little bit sick? A whole lot terrified?”
“Because you’re afraid you’re going to end up hurting the way you did last time, but that’s not going to happen.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve told you how I felt about you back then. Maybe it’s time you told me how you felt.”
Until recently, she’d never revealed the extent of her feelings for him to anyone.
Her grandmother probably suspected. But that didn’t mean she was ready to share how she’d felt with anyone else. Especially not Seth.
He eased her closer. “All right, let’s try this a different way. In the ten years since we broke up, have you been serious about anyone else?”
“Why does that matter? There’s nothing there, Seth. Whatever we had was gone.” The flutter of her heart and the ache behind her ribs told her she was lying, but she wasn’t ready to tell him that. And maybe she never would be.
There was sharing, and then there was exposing. There was a difference.
To admit to him that she still had feelings, strong feelings, would be exposing. And her instinct to protect herself was more powerful than her desire to share.
“You’ve already told me more than you ever have before. For example I didn’t know your mom was pregnant when she got married. That explains a few things about the way you acted back then. Why you jumped to the conclusions you did. It shows me how much I didn’t understand. That’s going to be different this time.”
This time?
She pulled back reluctantly. “Why would you want to put yourself through this again? I’m trouble, Seth.”
“I know.” He gave a soft laugh. “It’s one of the things I like most about you.”
“My father would—”
“No.” He covered her lips with his fingers, his eyes darkening. “What your father thinks about anything has no relevance to us. Not ever.”
“It’s not just my father. Your sister warned you about me.”
“Then it’s a good thing I never listen to my sister.” He took her face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. “The only two people who matter are the two people in this relationship. That’s us. I can be patient. I can wait while you learn to trust that I’ll be careful with your feelings, but don’t ever let anyone else influence how you feel about us. There’s no one else.”
No one else.
He meant it. He really meant it.
And she was tempted. So very tempted.
How many times had she lain in bed under the protective curtain of darkness, wondering what would have happened if she hadn’t got pregnant that night? How many times had she wished for a chance to find out?
He was giving her that chance.
She thought about how hurt she’d been last time. If it all went wrong, could she survive it again?
* * *
“I HAVE SOMETHING to tell you.” Fliss lay on her bed in the attic, listening to the sound of the ocean through the open window as she talked to Harriet on the phone.
“Now I’m nervous. I’ve barely heard from you in the last couple of weeks, and whenever I don’t hear from you I get a bad feeling. It usually means you’re hiding something from me. Is Grams okay?”
“She’s good. Her friends are around here the whole time. It’s busier than Times Square in July.”
“She said you’d been busy, too.”
“Walking dogs.” Seeing Seth.
Yesterday they’d gone surfing on the beach. The day before that they’d spent the evening at the Beach Hut, eating lobster dripping with butter.
Just the two of them. Alone. She ricocheted between terror and delicious excitement.
“So what did you want to tell me?”
“You know how I mentioned expanding the business? What do you think about branching out to the Hamptons? Half our clients escape here in the summer months.”
“But they already have dog-walking services there that they use.”
“Not all of them. I remember Claudia Richards saying that she wished there was a company like ours based here.”
“That’s one person.”
“I’m already walking five dogs.”
“One of those is Charlie. Don’t tell me you’re charging Grams to walk her dog.”
“She insisted on paying.”
“Fliss! You can’t take money from our grandmother.”
“Try telling her that. She’s more stubborn than I am. Once she makes up her mind about something, she doesn’t budge.” She couldn’t believe how close she’d become to her grandmother over the past few weeks. “She says that I’m losing work because I’m here with her, and so she’s going to at least pay me for the dog walking. And her friends are paying me, too. At this rate I’m going to be walking half the dogs on the South Fork.”
“I can’t imagine you with pampered pooches. Are you charging double?”
It was a relief to hear her sister laugh. “No. And I’m not walking any pampered pooches. These are all real, down-to-earth dogs.”
“And you’re thinking of making this permanent?”
“Why not? I’ve run the numbers and I think we have a scalable business. If you agree, then we can make it official.”
“But how would this even work?” Harriet sounded anxious. “You’re going to be coming home soon. How would you manage it then?”
Fliss paused. She’d spent hours thinking about the best way to say this. “I was thinking I might stay on a little longer.”
“You said Grams was okay.”
“She is.”
“So why stay? If you stay, you’ll keep bumping into Seth.”
Fliss stared at the wall. “I’ve been bumping into him quite a bit in fact.”
“Oh. That must be awkward for you.”
“Not that awkward. In fact, mostly on purpose.”
There was silence on the end of the phone. “You mean you’ve been seeing him?”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly—” Fliss transferred her phone to the other hand. “Yes, I’ve been seeing him.”
“How much of him?”
“So far he’s been clothed the whole time, so not much.”
“I meant, how often?”
“Which proves that although we look identical on the outside, our minds are entirely different. I thought you were asking me how much of him I’d seen in the flesh.” And the answer was not enough. Apart from that brief moment on the boat, he hadn’t even kissed her, and it was starting to drive her crazy. “I’ve seen him every day. Twice on some days.” There was another long silence, and Fliss frowned and glanced at her phone to check they were still connected. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here.” Her sister’s voice sounded strange. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Nothing to tell. I went to his house for dinner the night after Matilda’s baby was born. He said he wanted to clear the air. Then he took me sailing. We talked.” She’d thought about telling her sister what her grandmother had told her about their mother, but decided it was best to wait until they were together in person. “I’ve seen him a few times since then. Lunch. Dinner. We went kayaking once. That was fun.”
“You’re dating him? Is this serious?”
Serious? Fliss felt a flicker of alarm. “No! We’re just friends. Hanging out.”
“Friends with benefits.”
“No benefits. At least, not the ones you’re talking about. Seth had this idea that we should focus on other things for a while.” And she’d started to wonder how long “a while” was.
“Are you sure this is a good idea? I’m worried.”
“Don’t be.”
“He hurt you. I don’t want to see that happen again.”
“You’ve got that the wrong way around. Look, it’s been ten years. It’s all behind us.”
“If it’s behind you, why did you pretend to be me and escape from Manhattan?”
“I’m a drama queen.”
“Have you talked about it with him? No, of course you haven’t. You never open up, not even with me.”
Fliss frowned. If Harriet had a clue just how much emotion she’d protected her from, she’d be relieved. “I have told him a little. The downside of keeping everything to yourself is that misunderstandings so easily occur.”
If she hadn’t kept everything to herself, she might have believed he loved her.
If her mother hadn’t kept everything to herself, they might have understood more about why the marriage was so difficult.
Had their mother lied to protect them, or herself? It was something she’d thought about a lot.
“So you’ve talked to him?” There was an edge to Harriet’s voice that Fliss couldn’t ever remember hearing before.
“A bit. I’m a work in progress.”
“That’s great.” Her tone suggested otherwise, and Fliss wondered if Harriet was worried about her revealing too much to Seth.
She was a little uneasy about it, too. Talking freely was a whole new thing to her. Part of her wanted to confide in Harriet, but she didn’t want to worry her more than she already had.
“Tell me what’s been happening with you.”
“First, tell me more about Seth.”
“Nothing to tell,” Fliss said, and felt the lie stick in her throat.
* * *
HE MADE A point of spending as much time as possible with her. Even on the days when he’d had a long day in the clinic, he saw her, if only for a few hours. He’d thought about it and decided that trust came with familiarity, and familiarity came with contact. Lots of contact. That worked just fine for him. He’d even dropped in to see her in her grandmother’s house, and found them working side by side in a kitchen that smelled like heaven.
He’d accepted the offer of coffee and sat at the table watching while Fliss had rubbed butter and flour together, the look of concentration on her face absolute.
When she’d pulled a batch of finished cookies out of the oven, concentration had given way to pride.
Her grandmother had broken one in half to check the texture, and declared them perfect.
Seth had eaten four. It didn’t bother him a bit whether she could cook or not, but he liked the fact that she was growing closer to her grandmother. The way he saw it, opening up took practice, and as long as she practiced on people she could trust, that could only be a good thing.
“Saw you and Fliss together on the beach again.” Jed Black lifted his daughter’s kitten out of the crate and put him on the examination table. “She’s a fine-looking girl.”
“She is.”
If seeing Fliss meant he took some teasing from the locals, well, he was willing to live with that. In fact he would have said it was part of living in a community, and he enjoyed being part of a community. He liked seeing the same families, caring for the same animals throughout their lives. He enjoyed his work with the local animal shelter and appreciated how willing the locals were to take on abandoned pets.
“Those big blue eyes and those long legs are enough to threaten a man’s concentration.”
“Nothing wrong with my concentration, Jed. What’s the problem with the kitten? Looks healthy enough.” He stroked the animal, feeling the kitten quiver under his fingers. If Fliss knew how interested the community was in their blossoming relationship, would she take off back to Manhattan?
He hoped not.
He focused his attention on the Black family’s kitten and gradually worked his way through the animals in his waiting room. He had several cats, a dog with a limp and a rabbit with dental issues.
His last patient of the day was another cat, this one hissing and spitting as the owner tried to put him on the examination table.
Nancy came to help him, using a towel to stop the cat from hurting himself.
“I got him from the animal shelter,” Betsy Miller said. “They told me no one ever gives him a second look because he’s ugly and bad-tempered.”
“You were looking for those traits?” Seth examined the cat’s throat, his ears and abdomen while the animal twisted and smacked him with his paws. “I know, buddy. You don’t like being here. I get it, I really do. Some days I feel the same way.”
“I was looking for an animal who needed me. Seemed to me this fellow needed me badly. Needed someone who would look past his behavior and see what was behind it.”
“If only everyone was as astute as you, the world would be a better place.” Seth took the cat’s pulse. “It’s pounding. Not much surprise there.” For some reason the animal made him think of Fliss. Scratching when something scared her. Hissing to keep people at a distance.
Gradually the cat relaxed, finally compliant as he finished his examination.
“He likes you,” Betsy said, and Nancy nodded.
“Animals always like him. He’s patient, that’s why. And he moves slowly. No sudden movements. That’s a good thing.”
Not always.
With Fliss, he’d moved too slowly. Waited too long.
But he was about to fix that.