Nantucket Romance 3-in-1 Bundle (4 page)

Sam looked around the house and tried to see it with a fresh, unjaded perspective. The wood-plank floor, dotted with rugs, and the painted white furniture had a certain charm that her apartment lacked. For the first time, she saw it was really a quaint little cottage, a place Caden might see as homey and cute. She hadn’t expected that. She’d thought Caden would feel the same way about it that she did.

But her daughter couldn’t know what it had been like to grow up here. Even now the walls seemed to press in from every side, and the air seemed too heavy to breathe. How would Sam endure weeks of sorting through the memories she’d spent her life trying to forget?

Three

“H
ow much chocolate did you give her, Mrs. Maley?” Landon Reed put his stethoscope in place and timed the beats.

“It was a piece of chocolate cake, not even pure chocolate. I didn’t think it would hurt her.” Mrs. Maley drew her fingers through her Lhasa apso’s thick white fur.

Landon set down his stethoscope and palpated the dog’s bloated belly. When Mrs. Maley brought her dog in last fall with chocolate poisoning, he explained that chocolate was toxic to dogs, but even so, she brought Fanny in again on a frigid February evening after having rewarded the dog with Hershey’s squares. “
She just looked at me with
those pleading eyes, and I couldn’t say no. I didn’t give her much.”

Now, seeing the dog in misery again, he wanted to shake the woman. “What kind of chocolate was used in the cake?”

“It was the baking kind, you know, the kind that comes in foil-wrapped squares.” She brushed long strands away from Fanny’s face. “She’ll be all right, won’t she?”

Landon ignored the question while he finished the exam. The dog would be okay, he guessed. She had an increased heart rate and had vomited, according to Mrs. Maley, but he saw no signs of hyperactivity or muscular twitching.

He rubbed Fanny’s belly. “Baking chocolate is the most toxic of all chocolates. One ounce of it will poison a ten-pound dog, and Fanny is barely over that weight.”

Mrs. Maley fingered the salt-and-pepper hair at her nape. “I didn’t know.”

“I’ll have Nancy get you an information sheet, but I’d like to keep Fanny overnight just to be safe. I know you love her and don’t mean to harm her, but you can’t give in to her begging. Once dogs have chocolate, they crave it. It’s up to you to be strong for her sake.”

Mrs. Maley stared at her pet. “I understand. But you think she’ll be all right?”

“I believe so. But I’d rather be on the safe side.”

“Oh yes, of course.” Mrs. Maley caressed Fanny with long, slow strokes.

“I’ll send Nancy in with some paperwork and that info sheet.”

“Thank you so much, Dr. Reed.”

He nodded and left the exam room. The waiting area was empty, and Nancy had locked the front doors and straightened all the magazines. After he asked Nancy to finish up with Mrs. Maley, he gave Dr. Schmidt instructions regarding Fanny’s care, then went to his office to shed his lab coat and retrieve his keys. He hoped Mrs. Maley could show some restraint where Fanny was concerned. Otherwise, she’d bring the dog in sometime and wouldn’t be taking her back home.

When Landon exited the clinic, his black Labrador bolted across the small fenced-in yard. Max gave a short bark and sidled up against Landon’s leg.

Landon scratched behind Max’s ear. “Hey, buddy. You ready to go home?”

Max’s tail thumped against Landon’s thigh, then the dog trotted beside him, matching his stride. Landon opened the Jeep door, and Max hopped into the back, plopping down on the seat, ears perked and tongue hanging between his sagging flews.

Landon left the parking lot and turned onto the cobblestone street. He braked in front of the Even Keel Café, allowing a group of tourists to cross the road, before continuing out of town and toward the house.

He turned onto his street, wishing he had something to do. It was unlike him to feel antsy, but then, lately he hadn’t been himself. The routines he normally found comfort in were beginning to bore him, and the stillness of his house stirred a restlessness he didn’t understand.

The feeling had worsened since he ended things with Jennifer, but he knew it wasn’t from missing her. As beautiful as she was, inside and out, he hadn’t connected with her the way he longed to. She deserved better, but telling her had been hard.

Before Jennifer, there was Tracie, who talked incessantly but never said anything, and Natalie, who only wanted to go out. He’d taken her to DeMarco’s, Jared’s, and Brant Point Grill. He’d taken her to the aquarium, to Nantucket town shops, to Martha’s Vineyard. He hardly saw the inside of his cottage for weeks. Besides, Max didn’t like her.

Lately, he’d had all the time in the world to think, and he found himself yearning for something more. If he could just figure out what.

He pulled into the drive and turned off the ignition. Max stood between the two front seats, paws propped on the console.

Landon exited the Jeep, and Max followed, then trotted toward the house.

Landon’s eyes grazed past the neighbors’ houses, and that’s when his legs forgot how to work.

He felt as if he was trapped in a time warp as he watched her, on her hands and knees, tugging at a weed in the flower bed. With her flaxen hair pulled back into a ponytail, she was a vision straight from the past, and he blinked to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. Was dusk playing tricks with his vision?

No, she was there, and it was Sam. Her movements, the way she brushed wayward strands from her face with the back of her hand. Eleven years ago this summer she disappeared, but he could’ve picked her from a crowd of ten thousand.

He knew all the clichés about kindred spirits and soul mates, but there were no other words to describe what he’d felt for Sam. She was the only girl who’d ever captured him, mind, body, and spirit. The only girl he would’ve died for. Somehow that summer changed everything between them.

But standing here, seeing her now, summoned all the summers before. Thoughtful moments on the pier, lighthearted moments on his dad’s boat. Moments spent absorbing her strength and admiring her tenacity. She’d always drawn him like a blustery wind drew sailors onto the sea.

His eyes never left her form as his feet began a quiet march toward her.

Stupid, stupid weed!
Sam pulled at the stubborn green stalk that jutted out of the ground, her legs straining. Finally, the roots gave way, and she nearly toppled backward onto her rear end.

She’d spent the afternoon cleaning the inside of the house, just for her own sanity. Even Caden had refused to shower in the claw-foot tub until the soap scum had been scrubbed away. Her stepfather had apparently lost the desire for a clean house once his personal maid departed, but at least cleaning was a job she knew.

Sam grabbed a dandelion, wrapped it around her hand, and yanked it up by the roots. It dawned on her as she sat on her knees that she was doing the same task Emmett used to assign her. The thought bothered her, but she reminded herself it was for money this time, not for the whim of her stepfather. Still, a moodiness had enveloped her since their arrival, and the irony that Caden’s moodiness had been replaced by her own was not lost on Sam.

She sat back on her haunches and let the sharp wind smack her face. Seagulls cried, piercing the twilight, and she could hear the distant ebb and flow of relentless waves. Miss Biddle’s flagpole pinged. Her breath quickened, leaving her mouth
as dry as sand. She wished she was back in her apartment making mac ’n’ cheese, or having a drink at Brewsky’s, or even scrubbing floors at Havernack, Kleat, and Thomkinson’s.

Sam closed her ears to the noise and plucked another dandelion, tossing it in a heap on the grass. She wondered if she should check on Caden, but she could hear the faint thudding of her bare feet on the back porch. It was getting dark anyway, and she would have to call it quits soon. She gathered the pile of weeds and stood, feeling her leg muscles stretch.

When she turned, she noticed a man’s figure standing a short distance away. She started, then took a step backward, trying to discern his features in the muted light. He was tall and solid-looking. It was odd the way he stood so still, silence weaving a web around him.

Sam was a strong woman, but alarm pumped through her veins anyway. “Can I help you?” Her heart thudded against her rib cage, but she infused her tone with confidence.

He shifted then, tucking his hands in his back pockets. His head tilted sideways in a familiar move that made her stomach feel as if a dozen seagulls were trapped inside.

“It’s me,” he said.

The sound of his voice resurrected a wistfulness for a time that was no more. A time when play reduced the hours between sunrise and sunset to mere moments. A time when companionship validated long silences. A time when safety was as close as his embrace.

Sam had always missed him. Always when she described him to Caden, always when she stood on a Boston pier, looking across the vast ocean, but she hadn’t known the depth of her yearning until now. Hadn’t known the utter darkness of her world until the sudden presence of his light.

Her breath left her lungs, delivering his name. “Landon.”

Four

S
am stared at Landon, the clump of weeds in her hand forgotten. They say when you die, the moments of your life play out like a movie in fast forward, and she knew what they meant now. But she wasn’t about to die. She felt more alive than she ever had, and the reason was the man standing a few feet away.

“Sam. It’s been a long time.” He pulled his hands from his pockets.

For a moment, she thought he would step forward and embrace her, but the years slipped between them.

“Eleven years.” The moment the words were out, she wished them back. Was he remembering the last time he’d seen her, at his brother’s funeral? She spoke quickly as if to run an eraser across her previous words. “How are you?” It was something she’d ask a stranger.

“I’m doing all right. Graduated and came back to the island.”

“Just like you always planned.”

He shifted, and a street lamp flickered on, illuminating the side of his face and casting shadows over the other side. She was acutely aware her own face was in the light now, and she felt strangely exposed. She brushed back the hair that had come loose from her band.

“Just like.” The corner of his mouth tipped.

Time stretched out like the shore along Madaket Beach. She wondered who he’d married, but she didn’t want to know. She wondered if he ever thought about her, but she was afraid to ask.

Sam dropped the weeds, letting them fall at her feet, and brushed the dirt from her hands.

“Where do you live now?” he asked.

She heard the unspoken questions.
Where’d you disappear to eleven
years ago? Why did you leave without a word?
The proverbial elephant was in the room.

“Boston.” She supposed it didn’t matter if he knew where she lived now. She supposed it didn’t matter now if he knew she’d been pregnant when she left the island. So long as he didn’t know who the father was.

He nodded slowly, and Sam knew he was wondering what the draw of Boston was. Her plans, as he well knew, had been to teach tennis for another year after high school to bulk up her savings for college. She was going to take two years at Cape Cod Community College and graduate to a bright future in environmental technology.

Now she was a commercial cleaner living in a neglected apartment with her fatherless adolescent. Wasn’t life funny?

“What are you doing there? What’s your life like?” He aimed a full smile at Sam, and she felt its impact. “I want to know everything.”

His warm eyes tugged at Sam. “I don’t know where to start.” He was too young to have laugh lines, but he had them anyway. His face had matured, time carving the angle of his jawline and the planes of his face.

“Where do you work?”

Sam shrank at the inevitable question. She was a far cry from the person she’d planned to become. Once, she’d planned to change the world. Now she changed toilet paper rolls in corporate restrooms.

“I work for K&D Services, a commercial cleaner in downtown Boston.” She could have stopped there but didn’t. “I clean office buildings.” It came out like a dare.

He searched her face, and she knew he saw right through her. She was silly for trying to pretend she was proud.