Persuaded (5 page)

Hanna’s
thoughts weren’t at all what one might expect after “bumping” into her first
love. They weren’t derailed by all the tiny ways Derick had changed or how he
was the same. They weren’t even consumed by the sensation that broke upon her
at the sight of him—at his seeming at once so familiar and so foreign—like a
complete stranger she had known all her life.

No, it
was not any of these things that had Hanna’s attention. It was the object in
her hands and the memory it carried. The box, made of dark cherrywood, was
shaped and filed to smooth angles that looked like the facets of a diamond.
Hanna twirled the box with her fingertips in deliberation.

Her
heart sped up now, at the prospect of opening it again after so long. After
hesitating for just a beat, during which Hanna acknowledged and subsequently
ignored the warning in her head, she went for it.

The
hinge gave a protesting squeak as she pried the lid open, and then her breath
caught in her chest.

There
it was, still as polished as the day it had come to her. Didn’t this piece of
jewelry know that time had moved on? That she had changed and it had no right
to remain untarnished? Reaching out a shaking hand, she let her fingertips
glide over the polished stones. Hanna knew that the memory was about to press
upon her with pristine clarity and terrible beauty, but the damage had already
been done. And after all, wasn’t that the point?

She
could feel herself being sucked back into the vacuum of time, and in some
masochistic way she almost craved it . . .

The
Laconia
swayed lazily, rocking them in her arms. Hanna had her back pressed to Derick’s
chest, feeling as if she could stay in this moment infinitely. Why hadn’t
anyone invented a device that could stop time? Someone should really see to
that.

Derick’s
contented voice broke the stillness. “Do you like it?”

“Oh, I’m
way past like,” Hanna corrected, releasing a sigh of happiness as she held her
left hand up. It was the most unique engagement ring she had ever seen. The
silver band swirled up on each side of the stones, like arms reaching out to
embrace a treasure: a large moonstone in the center and smaller green
tourmalines on either side. How could Derick have known that she would pick out
something unorthodox herself, if given the chance? How did he manage to capture
the color of the sea and the two colors that fought for dominion in his eyes in
one ring?

Derick
dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “Now we need to set a date. I’m thinking
. . . next week?”

Hanna
sat up, pivoted in his arms with a laugh on her lips. She had expected to see
him grinning, smirking, anything that would indicate he was teasing her.
“You’re not serious.”

Derick
pulled his hands through her hair. “I don’t see any reason to wait. We both
know what we want. Why not go for it?”

Hanna
sat up out of his arms, tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. “But don’t you
think next week is a little soon?”

“It is
soon,” he allowed. “But the deadline for starting my race is in two weeks, so I
don’t really see an alternative.”

Ah.
Derick’s circumnavigation. When he’d asked her to marry him, she just assumed
she had a window of distraction-free time to plan the wedding while he was
gone.

“I
guess I figured the wedding would be after your race.”

Awkward
silence. “I’ll be gone for six months, Hanna.”

“I
know that. It’ll be awful and I’ll miss you like crazy. But it’s better than
eloping over the weekend, don’t you think?” Hanna hadn’t meant for sarcasm to
play any part in this conversation, but it crept into her voice all the same.
“Weddings don’t happen overnight, Derick. They take time.”

Derick
was sitting so still, he could have been a statue. “I don’t want to be without
you for six months, Hanna. If you’re okay with being away from me that long,
then I think we have a problem.”

This
was getting out of hand. Hanna stood, pulling Derick to his feet and circling
her arms around his waist. She kissed him softly, then looked up into his face.
“Why don’t we talk about this tomorrow? It’s late and I think we’re both
tired.”

Derick
said nothing. The only indication that he heard her was in the tightening of
his jaw. Stretching up onto her toes, Hanna drew his lips down to hers again,
having to apply a little more force than usual.

“I
love you,” she murmured against his mouth. “And I can’t wait to marry you. But
we don’t need to rush, do we?”

Derick
glared down at her. “I think there is some difference of opinion about that.”

Hanna
smiled, even though she felt more like growling. “Let’s meet for breakfast
tomorrow when we’ve had some rest, and we can talk more then.”

Derick
gave her a doubtful look before allowing himself to be distracted by her kiss .
. .

Hanna
turned onto her side, sending the standing tears in her eyes over the bridge of
her nose and onto the bed sheets. It had seemed like a good idea at the time: step
back, take a breath, try again when their eyes were unclouded by moonlight. But
breakfast never happened. Hanna went to the restaurant at the appointed time,
waited for over an hour. Each time she tried Derick’s phone his voicemail
picked up on the first ring. Finally, she became so worried that she drove over
to Brookings Harbor, terrified of coming upon mangled bodies among car wreckage
along the way. Her fears turned out to be unfounded, for which she was
initially relieved, then irritated. If Derick was okay, why hadn’t he shown up?
With a growing sense of unease, Hanna parked her car and walked down to the
slip where the
Laconia
had been moored. The only trace of Derick or his
sailboat was a note that was staked to the beam at the end of the dock.

Now,
Hanna removed the ring from its slot and lifted the underlying foam casing.
There, lying innocent and untouched as new snow, was the time-dulled paper that
held the words Hanna had memorized but not yet come to understand. It had been
folded again and again until it would fit in the box. As Hanna uncrinkled the
note, she felt herself coming undone like the paper, thinning and ripping along
each pleat and seam. She didn’t need to read the words—she knew them by heart,
but seeing Derick’s familiar script sprinkled salt on her freshly tenderized
heart.

Hanna—

Call
me crazy, but I don’t want my future wife so easily persuaded by others, while
remaining so unmoved by me. Keep the ring—I doubt anyone else would appreciate
it and I’d rather not have such a painful reminder of you.

Derick

She
had worn the ring faithfully at first, some part of her clinging to any wisp of
hope that all was not lost. As the days turned into weeks, she finally took it
off and set it atop her dresser. When weeks gave way to months, the ring
finally went back into its box, where it gathered dust until it was moved to
Hanna’s unmentionables drawer. For the first few years, she had taken it out on
the anniversary of the day she’d received it, allowing herself to wallow in
what might have been.

It had
been ages since she’d last opened that box. Though it remained out of sight, it
was never out of mind. She had, of course, stumbled on it packing for her trip.
She certainly hadn’t planned on bringing it with her to Old Lyme, but when it
came down to it, she found that she couldn’t leave it behind. After all, it was
a ring made of precious stones, and while they weren’t worth as much as
diamonds, she didn’t like the idea of leaving anything of value behind in her
empty apartment.

Even
now, years later, she couldn’t account for the words of his note. What did he
mean about her being easily persuaded by others? She had entertained every
possible scenario, each one more unlikely than the last, and still had no clue
as to what really happened. She might have kept trying to call him, tried
anything to decode the mystery, had her pride not gotten the best of her. If
Derick could sail off like that, leaving nothing more than a sullen “keep the
ring” in his wake, then maybe he wasn’t the person she wanted to spend her life
with anyway. After D-day, as she’d come to think of it, she didn’t see or hear
of him again. At least, not until last year.

Mary’s
husband, Charles, was an avid sports fan. In Hanna’s mind there were only three
kinds of people in the world: those who didn’t care one way or the other about
the outcome of the Super Bowl, those who morphed into sports fanatics only
during the Olympics—and Charles. He never missed a televised sporting event if
he could help it. Something was always on, and he was always watching.

It was
on just such an occasion, when Charles and Mary had been passing through town
and Hanna’s television happened to be tuned to one of the ESPN channels it so
rarely showcased, that she saw him.

The
buzz of the sports commentators was something Hanna could tune out easily
enough, until one of them spoke the name that sent a jolt of energy down her
spine. Derick Wentworth, they said, was to the sailing world what Tiger Woods
was to golf, what Kobe Bryant was to basketball. Hanna sat and listened in
stunned silence to the praise, watched as the United States catamaran cut
across the finish line and the tall, strawberry-blonde figure punched the air
in victory. A sort of numbness came over her as she watched Derick hoist the
Auld Cup, the coveted prize for the America’s Cup competition. At first the
sight of him gave her a dislocating shock, and her surroundings seemed to
dissolve in the pain of it. But each subsequent interview and magazine article
took a bit more of the edge off; seeing him smarted a little less each time.
But at the initial sight of his face or sound of his voice, there was always
that nanosecond when she felt as if she’d been slapped—hard.

Finally
the media hysteria died down, at least until the following competition two
years later, when Derick led Team USA to victory again. And then again.

Deciding
she would simply avoid all television every other year during the months of
July through September, Hanna tried to forget, tried to make the best of
things. But when the famed Captain Wentworth pulled out of last year’s
competition without any explanation, the media went wild. It didn’t matter if
Hanna stayed away from
Sports Center
, because his face was everywhere.
She couldn’t go to the grocery store or to the dentist’s office or to the DMV
to renew her driver’s license without catching some little snippet of media
speculation on his whereabouts. Someone saw him at a nude beach in Europe, at a
night club in Vegas, coming out of an AA meeting in L.A., wearing sunglasses
and a beanie to disguise his shame.

Of
course, she put no stock whatsoever in the hearsay. Derick had never been the
kind of person to tangle himself in anything of the sort. Hanna refused to
admit the possibility that his celebrity status, his money, or his success had
fundamentally changed him.

Now,
even with all of the misery that her stroll down memory lane had created, Hanna
couldn’t help feeling a wretched sense of victory on Derick’s behalf. The world
was searching high and low for their champion, leaving no exotic stone
unturned, and all the while he was holed up in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

SEVEN

ELLA
ENCHANTED

What was it to
her if Frederick Wentworth were only half a mile distant, making himself
agreeable to others?

—Jane Austen,
Persuasion

Early
the next morning, Derick set out on another run, sincerely hoping that this one
would end differently. He couldn’t help glancing at the house from yesterday as
he sprinted past, the one where
she
was staying. Needing a distraction,
he put on a burst of speed and didn’t slow down until he reached the marina.
After checking that his
Laconia
was still floating undisturbed, he
headed back to Kelynch. When he came to the breakwater he thought it might be
the perfect time to explore. He paused before going out, stretching his arms
above his head and then bending to touch his toes.

It was
then that he saw two tan, shapely legs suddenly in front of his face. Startled,
he looked up and met the bright green eyes and infectious smile of Barbie girl
from the day before. At least she was alone this time.

“Sorry!”
she gushed, “I didn’t mean to scare you!”

Straightening
up, Derick shrugged. “You didn’t.” As he looked at the girl he couldn’t help
smiling back at her. She was positively beaming—and strikingly attractive.

A
nervous laugh escaped her as she tucked her long, dark hair behind an ear. “I
just wanted to thank you for your help yesterday, with my sister-in-law.”

So
that was the relation. Stashing his curiosity over how
that other person
fit in, he shook his head. “Yeah, of course. I’m glad I happened to be in the
right place at the right time.”

“Me
too! Hanna and I could never have gotten Mary into the house ourselves.”