Proposing to Preston: The Winslow Brothers #2 (The Blueberry Lane Series Book 8) (17 page)

Looking in the mirror again, she almost didn’t recognize herself. She looked awfully young and worried, but she also looked like her
real
self after playacting at “Hollywood Elise” for two years. She wasn’t wearing sunglasses or designer clothes or a shopping bag full of Sephora on her face. She didn’t look sophisticated or polished. In fact, she looked like a farm girl who had decided to stop playing dress-up…and to her immense surprise, it felt so good and so familiar to be casual again, she couldn’t helping smiling at herself. In a strange way, it was a little bit like coming home.

“Hmm,” she breathed softly. Since when was being a farm girl okay with her? Since when was it something she didn’t feel the need to hide or conceal?

Her mother’s voice, so frequently her companion of late, intoned,
Maybe since you stopped being so scared of everything.

It was true.

She’d been so scared of leaving home and so scared to stay.

She’d been scared to move to New York City on her own and scared to pass up an opportunity to go to Tisch.

She’d been scared to turn down mediocre parts, and scared to stop waitressing, and scared to get her own apartment, and scared to date Preston, and scared to marry him.

And where had all of that fear landed her?

On a career path she couldn’t stand, living in a city she hated, way too far away from the man she loved. She’d let fear rule her life for years. She’d let fear wreak havoc on her dreams. In a shocking turn of events, fear had turned out to be stronger than ambition.

But not anymore.

Taking a deep breath, she lifted her chin and remembered Preston’s face that afternoon when he walked down the steps of the New York Public Library to find her waiting for him. That look of surprise. Of happiness and relief and…brand new love. He’d loved her so desperately even then. Had she any right to hope that she still had a place in his heart?

“Believe that you do,” she said softly. “Keep believing that you do until he tells you that you don’t. And even then…even then, Elise, hold on.”

She swallowed over the lump in her throat, grabbed her purse and the keys to her rental car and headed downstairs, praying she’d missed Jax. The last thing she wanted to do was drag her producer into her personal life or answer awkward questions about how she knew Preston.

As luck would have it, there were pastries on the kitchen counter and note from Jax saying that she hoped Elise was feeling better, she was leaving for L.A. for the next three days, and she’d be back on Thursday. Elise was to make herself at home, ask the housekeeper for anything she needed and call Jax with any concerns. Grabbing a cup of tea and a croissant for the road, Elise headed to her car.

As she drove into Philadelphia, Elise acknowledged that Preston had every right to be angry with her…and hurt…and cautious. She’d like to think that if she’d been less overwhelmed and more well-rested on that fateful L.A. morning, that she’d never have said such cruel things to Preston, but the reality was that after telling her that he understood and respected her fears, he’d all but demanded that she return to New York when
The Awakening
was over.

You’re not happy here. I can tell. Come home, Elise. Come home with me.

He’d played into all of her fears, and in retaliation, she’d struck out at him, hurting him deeply, placing the sort of distance between them that she’d regretted almost immediately.

Clenching her eyes shut for a moment at a stop light, she shifted her thoughts away from L.A. to the conversation that had preceded it two weeks earlier. Though many parts of that conversation had haunted her, there was one part that had circled in her head more than any others, keeping her up late at night, needling her and making her second-guess her decision to move out to L.A..

Preston had said:

As far as I knew, your Plan A never included Hollywood. You were already
living
your Plan A.

Reflecting on these words had helped Elise learn something significant about herself in the two years they’d been apart.

He was right.

She’d already been living her Plan A in New York. She was on her way to becoming a famous Broadway actress, which was the future she’d been working toward all her life. A career on the stage, with the energy of the audience feeding her performance and the lesser fame that accompanied a Broadway career allowing her to have a somewhat normal personal life. Plan B—Hollywood—had
never
been her dream, though it
had
offered her an escape from the pressures of her marriage under the guise of drive and ambition.

Once upon a time they’d both had a Plan A…but Preston’s had been ripped away, and Elise had done everything possible to kill her own.

Two years later, no longer blinded by enterprise, she knew what she’d had and grieved what she’d lost. She wasn’t afraid of anything anymore but living the rest of her life without her husband.

She wanted her Plan A back.

She wanted Broadway.

She wanted New York.

But most of all she wanted Preston. 

It was time to ask his forgiveness.

***

Preston arrived at the office at eight o’clock as usual, but wasn’t able to get anything done. He kept glancing up at the clock, willing it to move faster, then slower, then faster. It was nine-thirty now, and his hands were sweating as he fidgeted with two paper clips on his desk, unfolding them and then trying to shape them back into their original form. There were still thirty minutes until she arrived, but he’d already taken out the divorce papers, then put them away and taken them out again. Looking at them for just a moment, he swept them off the desk and shoved them into the top middle drawer just as someone knocked on his office door.

“Come in.”

Preston’s secretary, Nicole, opened the door and peeked in.

“A Mrs. Winslow is here to see you.”

Preston frowned. “My mother?”

Nicole shook her head and opened the door a little wider to show Elise standing behind her.

Surprised, he sucked in a breath, rising to his feet.

In a shirt that matched the color of her eyes, with her hair in the same ponytail she’d always worn when he fell in love with her in New York, she was so beautiful and so familiar, it hurt his heart to look at her.

“Mrs. Winslow,” he said softly, working hard to recover from the shock of the title she’d given his secretary. “Uh, yes. It’s fine, Nicole. It’s an old joke between me and Miss Klassan.”

Nicole stepped aside and Elise walked into his office, standing across from his desk as the door closed behind her, leaving them alone.

“What the hell was that?” he asked her, trying desperately not to drop his eyes to her too-tight T-shirt.

“The truth,” she said, meeting his eyes.

“What
truth
? Being someone’s wife is more than just saying a few meaningless words in front of a judge.”

She flinched, then nodded. “Fair enough.”

He sort of hated it that she didn’t argue with him, but then he reminded himself bitterly,
Elise didn’t stay and argue. When she was uncomfortable, she ran.
A little more rudeness and she’d be halfway back to Chateau Nouvelle.

“You’re early.”

“Is that okay?”

He huffed, the sound belligerent, even in his own ears. “I was in the middle of—”

“I’ll wait,” she said. She searched his eyes for a moment, gesturing to one of the two chairs in front of his desk. “May I sit down?”

“I guess you’re very anxious to get to the business at hand.”

She didn’t respond to this comment, merely looked at him inquisitively, her hand on the back of the guest chair, still waiting for permission to sit.

Setting aside his surprise that she still hadn’t run away, it occurred to him to
push
her away—to open his desk, hand her the papers, tell her to sign them and send them back to him via courier when she was done. But he couldn’t help himself. Damn his weak, foolish heart to hell and back, he wanted this moment alone with her. Especially since it was likely the last he’d ever have.

He shrugged. “Whatever.”

She pulled out the chair and sat down, the light, floral scent she still wore hitting his nostrils at the same time he fell back into his own chair. He loved her. Dear God, how he loved her. And how he despised himself for it.

“You were in the middle of something?” she asked, offering him a small, polite smile.

He swallowed past the lump in his throat, keeping his face impassive. “It can wait.”

Elise placed her hands on his desk, one on top of the other, staring at them for a moment before lifting her eyes, and Preston realized that she was wearing the engagement ring he’d given her so long ago. They’d never actually exchanged wedding rings; he’d meant to buy them with her after their “Marriage Summit,” but he’d never gotten the chance.

“I should ask for that back.”

She didn’t flinch and she didn’t run. She just looked back at him with those deep blue eyes. “It’s been a long time since I’ve worn it.”

“Why now?”
Just to torture me?

She searched his face, then said softly, “I need to ask for your forgiveness.”

Her multiple apologies on Saturday night had clued him into the fact that she was seeking peace with him. Or rather—in a leaner approach—he didn’t sense that she was interested in making things worse between them. He’d been nasty to her several times before throwing her out of the party and she’d taken it all without retaliating or running. And he might be wrong, but he sensed again, this morning, that she wouldn’t rise to the bait no matter what he said to her, or how much he pushed her. Her mission appeared to be peace between them, though he had no idea why. They didn’t need to be on good terms to dissolve their marriage. Honestly, all things equal, he’d just as soon hold on to his bitterness. It was a protection of sorts. It kept him cold and that made things easier for him.

“Is this a Mennonite thing?” he asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Pacifism and forgiveness?”

“I don’t recall you knowing very much about Mennonites.”

“I learned a little,” he confessed.

After quitting his job in New York and whiling away his days feeling sorry for himself at Westerly as he polished off most the liquor in the mansion, he’d trolled the internet for news about Elise or
The Awakening
. When there was none to be found, he’d read myriad blogs about life as a Broadway hopeful and about the Mennonite religion and way of life. It was all in an effort to understand her better, to try to understand why she’d pushed him away.

She raised her eyebrows in surprise, but said, “I was raised in a culture of forgiveness, yes, so that mentality is certainly part of who I am. But this isn’t just about my need for forgiveness. It’s about you and me.”

“There is no ‘you and me.’”

Her bottom lip wobbled for the first time since entering his office. “Which is part of the reason I’d like your forgiveness.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Why do I want your forgiveness?” she asked. “Because I left you. Because I didn’t give our marriage a chance. Because I told you that you weren’t a part of my life when you visited me. Because I let you believe I didn’t care for you.”

Did you? Did you care for me?

The words perched precariously on the tip of his tongue, but he forbade himself to ask, to sink to that level of humiliation—begging her for crumbs that were blown away years ago.

Suddenly he felt angry. He didn’t want to hear her apologies or grant her some late-game forgiveness so she could walk away with a clear conscience while he tried to put the pieces of his broken heart back together. It was flaying him open just to be in the same room with her, because the seminal fact remained: she was here to sign divorce papers.

Just get it over with.

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” He opened his drawer and pulled out the stack of papers, laying it on the desk between them, then placing a pen on top of them. “You don’t need to say you’re sorry, Elise. You don’t need my forgiveness. You don’t owe me anything.”

She flicked her glance to the papers, then back to his face. “What I said to you in L.A. wasn’t true. You asked what we were. And the truth is that we
were
lovely, Pres, but we were so much more than that. We were in love, but we were premature. We happened too fast, too soon.
We
frightened me.”

“If you had stayed, we could have figured it out together.”

“I don’t think so,” she said, her voice so melancholy it tugged at his heart. “At the time, I felt panicked. I felt lost. I ran toward something safe rather than staying somewhere that scared me.”

He knew this was the truth. He’d known it on their wedding day. He’d known it the morning after. An epic night of sex had obscured it, but not eliminated it. But she’d still left. She’d still placed her fears and career over him, above their marriage.